THE  WORLD  WITHIN 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

HEW  VORK  •    BOSTON   •   CHICAGO  •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •    SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON   •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


THE 
WORLD  WITHIN 


BY 


RUFUS  M.  JONES,  M.A.,  Litt.D. 

Author  of '"The  Inner  Life,"  etc. 


H3eto  gotfe 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1918 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1918 
By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


T& 


"5j 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published,  September,  1918 


PREFACE 

Some  of  the  sections  included  in  the  chapters 
of  this  volume  have  already  appeared  as  articles 
either  in  the  London  Friend  or  in  the  Homiletic 
Review.  The  editors  of  these  two  periodicals 
have  kindly  given  permission  for  the  publication 
of  such  articles  in  the  present  book. 


385106 


INTRODUCTION 

There  is  a  fine  passage  in  one  of  Keats's  Let- 
ters in  which  the  poet  says  that  our  world  is  cre- 
ated primarily  as  a  place  for  making  souls  —  in 
his  phrase  it  is  "  a  vale  of  soul-making." 

We  are  just  now  so  absorbed  with  external  tasks 
and  so  occupied  with  the  solution  of  problems  in 
our  outside  world  that  most  of  us  hardly  have  time 
to  consider  whether  we  have  any  souls  or  not. 
We  allow  that  question  to  await  its  turn  for  an 
answer.  But  there  are  some  questions  —  and  this 
is  precisely  one  of  them  —  which  cannot  be  post- 
poned while  outer  issues  are  being  settled.  In 
fact  all  outer  issues  are  intricately  tied  up  with 
just  this  inner  one.  It  turns  out  to  be  forever 
true  that  the  inner  aspect  which  we  call  morale  is 
the  main  factor  even  in  contests  which  are  sup- 
posed to  be  only  external.  Those  impalpable 
things  which  we  name  faith  and  vision  and  spirit 
and  nerve  are  greater  elements  in  the  determina- 
tion even  of  outside  victories  than  are  miraculous 
long-distance  guns.     The  conviction  that  our  fun- 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

damental  aims  are  righteous  is  an  unspeakable 
asset.  Moreover,  it  appears  as  clearly  evident 
now  as  it  was  two  thousand  years  ago  in  Syria  that 
it  is  of  no  use  or  profit  to  win  the  whole  world  if 
the  inner  life  and  self-respect  are  lost  in  the  proc- 
ess; that  houses  and  lands,  territory  and  spheres 
of  influence,  are  a  poor  substitute  for  that  intangi- 
ble thing  which  we  call  the  soul. 

Some  day,  near  or  remote,  this  war  will  be  over. 
These  unparalleled  armies  will  demobilize  and 
these  multitudes  of  young  men  who  have  been  liv- 
ing under  most  unwonted  human  conditions  and 
have  been  facing  death  every  day  in  appalling 
shapes  will  return  to  the  pursuits  which  they  have 
intermitted  for  this  vast  business  of  Armageddon. 
The  new  tasks  of  reorganization,  rehabilitation 
and  reconstruction  awaiting  them  and  us  will  be 
fully  as  unparalleled  as  the  modes  and  magnitude 
of  the  warfare  have  been.  And  beyond  any  ques- 
tion the  most  important  preparation  for  this  im- 
mense work  of  rebuilding  the  wrecked  and  shat- 
tered world  will  be  the  clarification  and  fortifica- 
tion of  the  soul.  There  will  be,  no  doubt,  enor- 
mous economic  issues  to  be  settled.  We  shall  be 
confronted  with  a  wholly  novel  group  of  political 
problems.  It  will  be  a  world  charged  with  un- 
usual dynamic  social  aspirations  which  must  be 


INTRODUCTION  vii 

dealt  with.     But  still  deeper  than  all  other  issues 
will  be  the  issues  of  the  soul. 

We  cannot  build  this  new  world  of  ours  out  of 
material  stuff  alone.  It  will  not  be  a  matter 
solely  of  iron  and  coal  and  foodstuffs.  It  will,  as 
always,  be  a  matter  of  creative  faith,  of  spiritual 
vision  —  in  a  word,  the  ultimate  issue  will  turn 
upon  the  quality  and  character  of  the  soul  of  those 
of  us  who  are  to  do  the  building.  We  must  be 
on  our  guard  against  low  and  miserable  material 
aims  which  would  put  the  holiest  hopes  of  our  age 
again  in  imminent  peril.  We  must  restore  trust 
and  confidence  in  a  living  God  who  is  not  off  be- 
yond and  above  the  storm  and  stress  of  life,  but 
in  the  very  pulse  and  flow  of  it  all,  and  whose 
will  for  a  good  world  is  the  deepest  reality  of  our 
universe.  We  shall  certainly  care  less  than  we 
once  did  for  non-essentials  in  religion,  for  the  ex- 
ternal counters,  for  the  time-worn  survivals  of 
bitter  controversies,  but  we  shall,  if  we  are  wise, 
care  more  than  ever  for  the  central  realities  by 
which  men  live.  St.  Augustine  was  right  when  he 
said:  "  My  life  shall  now  be  a  real  life,  being 
wholly  full  of  Thee."  Variations  in  external 
matters  will  become  —  are  already  becoming  — 
unimportant  and  negligible.  The  things  which 
form  and  fashion  the  soul  and  set  it  on  "  the  path 


viif  INTRODUCTION 

to  that  which  is  Best "  will  be  the  abiding  things 
and  the  only  ones  of  any  permanent  value  for  vital 
religion. 

We  do  not  want  a  religion  which  meets  the 
needs  of  experts  alone  and  moves  in  a  region 
beyond  the  reach  of  common  men  and  women 
who  have  no  taste  for  the  intricacies  of  theology. 
If  religion  is,  as  I  profoundly  believe,  the  essen- 
tial way  to  the  full  realization  of  life,  we,  who 
claim  to  know  about  it,  ought  to  interpret  it  so 
that  its  meaning  stands  out  plain  and  clear  to  those 
who  most  need  it  to  live  by.  I  have  always  be- 
lieved and  maintained  that  the  apparent  lack  of 
popular  interest  in  it  is  largely  due  to  the  awk- 
ward and  blundering  way  in  which  it  has  been 
presented  to  the  mind  and  heart  of  those  who  all 
the  time  carry  deep  within  themselves  inner  hun- 
gers and  thirsts  which  nothing  but  God  can  sat- 
isfy. I  do  not  want  to  write  or  print  a  line  which 
does  not  at  least  bear  the  mark  and  seal  of  real- 
ity —  and  which  will  not  make  some  genuine  fact 
of  life  more  plain  and  sure. 

The  struggle  for  a  conquering  inner  faith  has 
in  these  strenuous  days  been  laid  upon  us  all. 
The  easy,  inherited,  second-hand  faith  will  not 
do  for  any  of  us  now.  We  cannot  stand  the  stern 
issues  of  life  and  death  with  any  feeble,  formal 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

creed.  We  demand  something  real  enough  and 
deep  enough  to  answer  the  human  cry  of  our  soul 
to-day.  We  need  to  be  assured  that  we  do  not 
in  the  last  resort  fall  back  on  the  play  of  mole- 
cules but  that  underneath  us  are  everlasting  Arms. 
We  want  to  know  not  only  that  there  is  law  and 
order  but  that  a  genuine  Heart  of  Love  touches 
our  heart  and  brings  us  calm  and  confidence. 

Robert  Louis  Stevenson  has  somewhere  told  of 
an  experience  that  happened  once  to  his  grand- 
father. He  was  on  a  vessel  that  was  caught  by  a 
terrific  storm  and  was  carried  irresistibly  toward 
a  rocky  shore  where  complete  destruction  was  im- 
minent. When  the  storm  and  danger  were  at 
the  height  he  crept  up  on  deck  to  look  around  and 
face  the  worst.  He  saw  the  pilot  lashed  to  the 
wheel,  with  all  his  might  and  nerve  holding  the 
vessel  off  the  rocks  and  steering  it  inch  by  inch 
into  safer  water.  While  he  stood  watching,  the 
pilot  looked  up  at  him  and  smiled.  It  was  little 
enough  but  it  completely  reassured  him.  He  went 
back  to  his  room  below  with  new  confidence,  say- 
ing to  himself,  "We  shall  come  through;  I  saw 
the  pilot  smile!  "  If  we  could  only  in  some  way 
catch  sight  of  a  smile  on  the  face  of  the  great 
Pilot  in  this  strange  rough  sea  in  which  we  are 
sailing,  we,  too,  could  do  our  work  and  carry  our 


x  INTRODUCTION 

burdens  with  confidence,  perhaps  with  joy.  I  wish 
this  little  book  might  help  some  readers  to  be  con- 
vinced that  even  in  the  dark  and  the  storm  there  is 
a  smile  of  hope  and  victory  on  the  Pilot's  face  and 
that  He  is  saying  as  the  great  Galilean  said :  "  Be 
of  good  cheer,  I  am  winning  the  victory  over  the 
world." 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction v 

CHAPTER  I 

The  Deeper  Universe i 

I     Where  Love  Breaks  Through     ....  i 

II     Unseen  and  Intangible  Realities  ....  6 

III     The  World  We  Form  Within     ....  12 


CHAPTER  II 

The  Way  of  Faith  and  Love  . 
I     The  Central  Act  of  Religion  . 
II     Faith  as  a  Way  of  Life     . 

III  A  Religion  Which  Does  Things 

IV  The  Gospel  of  God  With  Us 


18 

18 
22 

27 
32 


CHAPTER  III 

The  Way  of  Dedication 37 

I     Inner  Compulsion 37 

II     The  All  for  the  All 41 

III  Habakkukeans 45 

IV  Consecration  to  Service 5° 

V     Poured  Out 58 

CHAPTER  IV 

The  Things  By  Which  We  Live 64 

I     The  Plumb-Line 64 

II     The  Fact  of  Must 71 

III  Where  Arguments  Fail 75 

IV  The  Meaning  of  Obligation 81 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  V  page 

The  Great  Venture 88 

I     Concerning  Immortality 88 

II     The  Miracle  Again 94 

CHAPTER  VI 

The  Soul's  Converse 99 

I     Prayer  as  an  Energy  of  Life 99 

II     Prayer  and  Reflection 115 

CHAPTER  VII 

Christ's  Inner  Way  to  the  Kingdom     .     .     .124 

I     "From  Above" 124 

II     Like  Little  Children 131 

III     The  Inner  Issue  in  Gethsemane  .      .      .      .136 

CHAPTER  VIII 

Jesus  Christ  and  the  Inner  Life     .     .     .     .143 

I     In  the  Synoptic  Gospels 143 

II     In  the  Writings  of  St.  Paul 158 

III     In  the  Writings  of  St.  John 164 


THE  WORLD  WITHIN 

CHAPTER  I 
THE  DEEPER  UNIVERSE 


WHERE    LOVE    BREAKS   THROUGH 

We  do  well  to  make  strenuous  exertions  to  meet 
the  threatening  food-famine  and  to  cultivate  ef- 
ficiently all  the  acres  that  are  available  for  increas- 
ing the  food-supply  of  the  world.  But  there  is 
another  kind  of  famine  which  is  threatening  and 
ominous,  and  which  has  not  yet  received  anything 
like  adequate  attention.  I  mean  the  spiritual 
famine  of  our  stricken  world.  Multitudes  of  men 
are  daily  facing  danger  and  death.  Vast  numbers 
are  weighted  with  loss,  suffering  and  agony.  The 
deeper  problems  of  life  rest  heavily  upon  all  of 
us.  The  old  religious  phrases  are  inadequate. 
Human  hearts  everywhere  are  longing  for  fresh 
and  vital  assurance  that  in  this  time  of  the  world's 
greatest  spiritual  need  the  everlasting  Arms  of 
divine  love  are  underneath  us,  and  that  one  like 


2  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  I 

unto  the  Son  of  Man  is  walking  with  us  in  the 
midst  of  the  fire.  Where  shall  we  look  for  this 
assurance? 

We  know  much  more  about  the  universe  than 
the  ancient  world  knew,  but  the  more  we  know 
about  it  the  harder  it  becomes  for  our  spirits  to 
accept  the  visible  universe  as  the  ultimate  and  final 
reality.  The  cold  and  pitiless  forces  of  nature  are 
not  less  cold  and  pitiless  when  we  succeed  in  dis- 
covering their  laws  and  habits.  One  comes  back 
from  his  study  of  the  march  of  suns,  and  planets, 
and  the  spiral  movements  of  world-making  nebulae 
with  very  little  to  comfort  the  longings  of  the 
heart.  He  sees  that  these  curves  are  all  irrev- 
ocable and  inevitable  and  that  each  event  unfolds 
out  of  the  one  which  preceded.  It  is  a  wonderful 
and  amazing  system,  but  it  offers  no  tenderness, 
no  love,  no  balm  for  the  wounds  of  the  spirit.  It 
rolls  mercilessly  on,  and  he  may  be  thankful  if  its 
wheels  do  not  ride  over  him  —  the  midget  of  an 
hour,  riding  on  one  of  the  flying  globes  of  this 
mechanical  system. 

It  is  useless  to  expect  tenderness  and  love  and 
balm  in  a  system  of  mechanical  forces.  That  kind 
of  world  can  reveal  gravitation  and  electricity, 
attraction  and  repulsion;  it  can  show  us  matter 
moving  under  law;  it  can  exhibit  the  transforma- 


Ch.  I]         THE  DEEPER  UNIVERSE  3 

tion  of  one  form  of  energy  into  some  other  form; 
but  from  the  nature  of  the  case  it  cannot  manifest  a 
heart  of  tenderness  or  a  spirit  of  love.  Those 
traits  belong  only  to  a  person,  and  a  mechanical 
system  can  never  reveal  a  person.  Physics  and 
chemistry,  geology  and  astronomy  do  discover  a 
revelation  of  God,  but  it  is  necessarily  a  revelation 
limited  to  the  possibilities  of  their  field.  The  test- 
tube  and  the  air-pump  help  to  demonstrate  the  fact 
that  the  universe  is  a  realm  of  purpose,  of  order, 
and  of  inexhaustible  energy,  but  they  must  not  be 
expected  to  show  us  a  divine  face  or  a  heart  of 
love.  God  puts  no  more  of  himself  into  chemistry 
or  physics  or  astronomy  than  chemistry  or  physics 
or  astronomy  will  hold ! 

Even  this  external  universe  with  its  law  and 
order,  its  forces  and  energies,  can  not  be  as  cold 
and  pitiless  as  it  appears  when  it  is  mistakenly 
sundered  and  cut  away  from  the  deeper  and  more 
spiritual  reality  working  endlessly  through  it  and 
forever  preparing  for  a  higher  stage  to  succeed 
and  transcend  a  lower  stage.  Physical  nature  is 
always  more  than  the  bare  mechanical  fragment 
with  which  the  descriptive  sciences  deal.  "  That 
is  not  first  which  is  spiritual,  but  that  which  is 
natural;  and  afterward  that  which  is  spiritual." 
Our  life  can  not  be  completely  sundered  from  the 


4  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  I 

physical  universe.  We  are  in  some  way  organic 
with  it  and  of  it,  and  the  God  we  seek  can  show 
at  least  some  aspects  of  himself  through  it.  He 
uses  it  steadily  toward  spiritual  ends,  though  under 
obvious  limits.  It  is  a  realm  of  mighty  moral 
discipline  and,  fragment  though  it  is  by  itself, 
it  points  all  serious  souls  to  the  larger  whole, 
the  completer  reality  which  supplements  and  ful- 
fills it. 

If  the  universe  is  deeper  than  physics  and 
astronomy  can  reveal,  if  there  is  some  greater 
reality  than  can  be  expressed  in  terms  of  energy 
and  law,  how  could  this  deeper  reality  reveal 
itself?  Where  could  the  veil  be  lifted?  Such  a 
revelation  could  be  made  to  humanity  only 
through  a  person.  Mountain  peaks  and  stars  can 
not  embody  love  and  sympathy  —  they  can  em- 
body only  energy.  Love  and  sympathy,  tender- 
ness and  patience,  forgiveness  and  grace  are  traits 
of  character,  attitudes  of  a  personal  spirit.  If 
they  are  ever  to  be  revealed,  they  must  be  revealed 
in  the  life  of  a  person. 

Now,  once  there  was  a  Person  who  felt  that 
his  life  was  a  genuine  exhibition  of  the  divine  in 
the  human,  the  eternal  in  the  midst  of  time.  He 
lived  and  died  in  the  consciousness  that  through 
his  life  he  was  showing  God  to  men;  that  his  love 


Ch.  I]         THE  DEEPER  UNIVERSE  5 

was  a  revelation  of  the  real  nature  and  character 
of  God;  that  his  sympathy  for  the  weary,  heavy- 
laden,  sin-distressed,  heart-hungry  people  of  the 
earth  was  a  true  unveiling  of  the  heart  of  the  uni- 
verse; that  his  suffering  over  sin,  his  grace  and 
patience  made  the  Father's  character  visible  and 
vocal  in  the  world.  He  felt  this,  and  consecrated 
his  life  to  this  deeper  revelation  of  God.  Some 
have  doubted  and  some  have  been  perplexed,  but 
there  have  always  been  some  —  and  it  is  a  grow- 
ing number  —  who  profoundly  believe  that  here 
in  him  is  the  personal  character  of  God  revealed  to 
us.  However  leaden  and  pitiless  the  march  of  the 
universe  may  be  at  other  points,  at  this  one  point, 
at  least,  love  and  tenderness  break  through  and 
enwrap  us.  This  God  who  is  unveiled  in  Christ  is 
the  God  our  world  needs  to-day.  Not  a  God  of 
abstract  metaphysics,  not  a  God  apart  in  solitary 
bliss  and  perfection,  but  the  God  and  Father  of 
Jesus  Christ,  revealing  himself  to  us  in  the  closest 
intimacy  of  fellowship  with  us,  and  suffering  like 
ourselves  in  the  travail  and  tragedy  of  the  world's 
suffering  — "  A  God  who  lives  in  the  perpetual  giv- 
ing of  himself."  The  Jesus  whom  Peter  con- 
fessed and  Mary  loved  can  become  the  Christ  of 
the  world,  and  through  him  can  come  afresh  to  us 
the  God  whom  our  chemistry  and  astronomy  were 


6  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  I 

too  limited  to  reveal  —  we  can  see  him  in  the  face 
of  Jesus  Christ. 

II 

UNSEEN   AND   INTANGIBLE   REALITIES 

"  That  which  is  not  brings  to  naught  that  which  is." 

St.  Paul's  saying  is  not  quite  a  paradox.  It  is 
rather  a  vivid  and  forceful  way  of  saying  what 
he  often  says,  namely,  that  unseen  and  intangible 
realities  build  and  shape  the  things  we  see.  In- 
discernibles  are  mighty  factors.  An  invisible 
world  is  behind  and  within  the  visible  one.  We 
recognize  this  truth  now  in  a  multitude  of  ways. 
In  the  fine  peroration  of  his  great  message  on 
"  The  Leadership  of  Educated  Men  " —  given  at 
Brown  University  in  1882  —  George  William 
Curtis  very  impressively  referred  to  the  invisible 
force  of  gravitation  which  holds  the  world  to- 
gether and  controls  all  its  movements.     He  said: 

"  In  the  cloudless  midsummer  sky  serenely  shines  the 
moon,  while  the  tumultuous  ocean  rolls  and  murmurs 
beneath,  the  type  of  illimitable  and  unbridled  power;  but 
resistlessly  marshaled  by  celestial  laws  all  the  wild  waters, 
heaving  from  pole  to  pole,  rise  and  recede  obedient  to 
that  mild  queen  of  heaven." 

We  have  slowly  come  to  realize,  as  science  has 
piled  up  its  inferences  and  conclusions,  that  our 


Ch.  I]         THE  DEEPER  UNIVERSE  7 

visible  world  is  only  a  fragment  of  a  larger  uni- 
verse and  swims  in  a  vast  invisible  world  which 
has  no  known  or  conceivable  bounds.  Out  of  this 
inexhaustible  sea  of  energy  come  the  forces  which 
build  our  visible  world — forces  which  we  name 
and  use  but  do  not  understand.  Gravitation,  co- 
hesion, attraction,  magnetism,  electricity,  molecu- 
lar energy,  ether-waves  are  a  few  of  the  words 
which  stand  for  mighty  forces.  We  say  the 
words  and  look  wise,  as  though  our  finger  were 
on  a  secret.  We  know,  however,  no  more  about 
the  real  nature  of  these  forces  which  build  our 
world  than  Aladdin  knew  about  the  jinnee  that 
reared  his  palace  when  he  rubbed  his  lamp.  We 
know  little  more  than  that  the  visible  comes  out  of 
the  invisible,  and  that  we  can  learn  how  these  in- 
visible forces  work  and  how  to  direct  them  for  our 
practical  ends. 

Everywhere  and  always  the  invisible  is  the 
builder  of  the  visible.  Michelangelo  saw  the 
dome  of  St.  Peter's  in  the  viewless  realm  of  his 
own  soul  before  he  raised  it  into  visible  beauty 
above  the  groined  arches  of  the  cathedral.  Every 
creation  of  art  is  an  instance  of  the  same  truth. 
The  form  of  beauty  which  comes  forth  into  visible 
shape  for  the  many  to  see  and  admire  has  first 
been  an  inner  possession,  growing  into  perfection 


8  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  I 

in  the  spaceless  soul  of  the  creator,  where  only 
one  could  see  it. 

Plotinus  used  to  hold  that  it  is  much  truer  to  say- 
that  the  body  is  in  the  soul  than  that  the  soul  is  in 
the  body.  And  strange  as  it  may  sound,  there  is 
much  to  be  said  for  this  view  of  the  ancient  Greek 
philosopher.  There  are  many  good  evidences  to 
prove  that  some  invisible  reality  —  which  we  may 
just  as  well  call  soul  as  anything  else,  at  least  until 
we  get  a  word  that  means  more  —  that  some  in- 
visible reality  builds  and  vivifies  and  directs  this 
visible,  corporeal  bulk  of  ours.  There  is,  for  ex- 
ample, a  tiny  speech-center  in  the  left  hemisphere 
of  the  human  brain,  so  complicated  that  all  the 
telegraphic  instruments  in  the  United  States,  com- 
bined and  worked  from  one  central  key,  would 
make  a  very  simple  instrument  compared  with  it. 
When  a  baby  arrives  here  on  his  hazardous  ven- 
ture his  speech-center  is  not  yet  organized.  Even 
if  he  knew  all  the  wonders  of  the  world  he  has  left 
behind  he  could  tell  nothing  about  it  ■ —  any  more 
than  Beethoven  could  have  rendered  a  symphony 
without  musical  instruments.  It  looks  as  though 
the  expanding  mind  of  the  child  slowly  organized 
and  builded  this  marvelous  center,  which  was  only 
fleshy  pulp  before  the  organization  was  wrought 


Ch.  I]         THE  DEEPER  UNIVERSE  9 

out  in  it.  There  is,  at  any  rate,  no  way  to  account 
in  terms  of  matter  for  the  transcendent  meanings 
which  burst  into  consciousness  at  the  sound  of 
words,  nor  for  the  way  in  which  conscious  effort 
and  attentive  purpose  build  the  little  bridges  be- 
tween the  cells  of  the  brain  and  make  of  it  an 
instrument  for  the  spirit. 

We  are,  once  more,  all  familiar  with  the  way 
an  invisible  ideal  holds  and  controls  and  dominates 
and  constructs  a  life.  It  is  one  of  the  most 
notable  features  of  our  strange  human  experience. 
That  which  is  not  yet  —  for  an  ideal  plainly  is 
what  ought  to  be  but  is  not  —  works  like  a  mighty 
energy.  It  upholds  the  spirit  in  hours  of  defeat. 
It  makes  one  oblivious  to  pain.  It  conquers  all 
opposition.  It  carries  the  will,  contrary  to  all 
laws  of  mechanics,  along  the  line  of  greatest  resist- 
ance. It  turns  obstacles  and  hindrances  into 
chariots  of  victory.  It  does  the  impossible.  In 
Paul's  great. words,  "the  things  which  are  not 
bring  to  naught  the  things  which  are !  "  What 
cannon  of  unwonted  caliber,  pounding  at  the 
battle-lines  of  men,  can  not  do,  the  impalpable 
ideas  and  ideals  of  the  common  people  may  after 
all  accomplish.  Dreams  and  visions  and  hopes 
are  not  so  empty  and  useless  as  they  often  seem. 


io  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  I 

Suddenly  they  find  a  potent  voice,  they  grow 
mighty,  they  gather  volume,  and  they  do  what 
cannon  could  not  do. 

"  One  man  with  a  dream,  at  pleasure 
Shall  go  forth  and  conquer  a  crown ; 

And  three  with  a  new  song's  measure 
Can  trample  a  kingdom  down. 

"  We,  in  the  ages  lying 

In  the  buried  past  of  the  earth, 
Built  Nineveh  with  our  sighing 

And  Babel  itself  with  our  mirth; 

"  And  o'erthrew  them  with  prophesying 
To  the  old  of  the  new  world's  worth; 

For  each  age  is  a  dream  that  is  dying 
Or  one  that  is  coming  to  birth."  x 

The  religious  books  of  ancient  Persia  say  that 
when  the  soul  of  a  good  man  arrives  at  the  river 
of  death  a  beautiful,  shining,  radiant  figure  meets 
it  and  says  to  it:  "I  am  your  true  self,  your  best 
self,  your  real  self.  I  am  the  image  of  your 
ideals,  your  strivings,  your  resolves,  your  deter- 
mined purposes.  I  am  you.  Henceforth  we 
merge  together  into  one  harmonious  life."  The 
parable  is  a  genuine  one.  We  are  forever  what 
our  ideals  make  us. 

1  The  Dreamers  by  Arthur  William  O'Shaughnessy. 


Ch.  I]         THE  DEEPER  UNIVERSE  n 

But  deeper  and  surer  than  all  other  invisible 
realities  is  that  divine  Spirit,  not  seen,  but  felt, 
who  is  the  ground  of  our  real  being,  the  source  of 
our  longings,  the  inspirer  of  our  larger  hopes,  the 
inner  energy  by  which  we  live.  Some  persons 
think  he  must  be  dead  or  asleep  or  on  a  journey. 
They  see  such  stalking  evils,  such  collapses  of 
civilization,  such  ugly  shadows  over  the  fair 
world,  that  they  cannot  hold  their  thin  clew  of 
faith  any  longer.  It  has  snapped  and  left  them 
standing  alone  in  their  dark  cave.  But  he  is 
there  all  the  same,  though  they  see  him  not  nor 
know  him.  He  does  not  vanish  in  the  dark  or 
in  the  storm.  There  is  much  love  working  still  in 
these  hard,  dark  days.  Grace  abounds,  often  un- 
suspected, even  though  sin  seems  so  potent. 
Courage  and  heroism  never  broke  through  and 
showed  their  greatness  more  clearly  than  now. 
Sacrifice,  which  is  woven  in  the  same  warp  with 
love,  is  moving  like  a  radiant  light  everywhere 
through  the  storm.  Faith  in  something  still  holds 
men  and  women  to  their  hard  tasks  of  endurance. 
All  that  Christ  was  and  is  still  attracts  the  soul 
that  sees  it.  If  an  eclipse  dims  or  veils  the  sight 
of  him  for  the  moment,  we  may  be  sure  that  this 
warm,  healing  Sun  of  our  life  has  not  set.  He 
is  still  there,  and  some  of  us  continue  to  feel  our 


12  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  I 

hearts  burn  with  his  presence,  which  is  as  indu- 
bitable a  reality  as  is  the  rock-ribbed  earth  upon 
which  we  tread.  What  he  needs  is  better  organs 
to  reveal  himself  through,  richer,  truer,  holier 
lives  to  show  his  love  through,  more  finely  organ- 
ized personalities  for  his  grace  to  break  through 
into  the  world.  He  cannot  do  his  work  without 
us.  He  cannot  preach  without  our  lips,  comfort 
without  our  help,  heal  without  our  hands,  carry 
the  truth  without  our  feet,  remove  the  shadow 
without  our  faith  and  effort.  The  invisible  works 
through  the  visible,  the  unseen  and  eternal  oper- 
ates through  little  instruments  like  us! 


Ill 

THE   WORLD   WE    FORM   WITHIN 

We  have  had  many  illustrations  in  these  sol- 
emn months  of  the  momentous  character  of  re- 
sponsible decisions.  Many  lives  hang  upon  one 
man's  judgment  concerning  a  course  of  action, 
and  even  the  fate  of  a  nation  is  involved  in  the 
conclusion  to  which  a  single  individual  arrives. 
If  the  responsible  man  blunders,  dire  consequences 
follow;  if  he  is  wise,  large  advantages  accrue. 
National    disasters    are    generally    no    accidents. 


Ch.  I]         THE  DEEPER  UNIVERSE  13 

They  attach  to  inadequate  planning  or  to  ineffi- 
cient management  of  affairs. 

What  is  true  of  the  large  outer  world  is  true 
also  —  inevitably  true  —  in  the  smaller  inner 
world  which  the  schoolmen  used  to  call  the  micro- 
cosm, that  is,  in  the  soul  of  man.  Here  also  a 
person  blunders  at  his  peril.  Here,  too,  conse- 
quences attach  to  decisions  and  deeds,  and  the 
quality  of  the  reaping  is  determined  by  the  char- 
acter of  the  sowing.  This  is  a  profound  and 
fundamental  feature  of  Christ's  teaching.  Al- 
ways and  everywhere  in  his  message  the  beyond  is 
within,  destiny  is  bound  up  with  inner  attitudes, 
with  heart  and  mind  and  will.  The  secret  of 
heaven  and  hell  has  not  yet  been  fully  explored. 
We  have  added  little,  in  these  later  years  of  exces- 
sive question-asking,  to  our  scanty  knowledge  of 
the  regions  beyond  the  margin  of  this  life.  "  We 
should  listen,"  as  a  wise  man  has  told  us,  "  on  our 
knees  to  any  one  who  by  stricter  obedience  had 
brought  his  thoughts  into  parallelism  with  celes- 
tial currents  and  could  hint  to  human  ears  the 
scenery  and  circumstances  of  the  newly  parted 
soul." 

But  while  our  ignorance  about  the  Great  Be- 
yond is  still  as  vast  as  that  of  Europe  was  about 
the  western  hemisphere  before   Columbus  sailed 


i4  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  I 

in  the  Pinta,  we  have  been  making  steady  prog- 
ress in  our  explorations  of  this  inner  world  of 
ours  —  this  microcosm.  We  know  much  about 
that  viewless  realm  we  call  the  soul.  And  the 
mor  we  know  about  it  the  more  wonderful  do 
the  words  of  Christ  appear  concerning  this  strange 
world  within.  John  was  surely  right  when  he 
said,  "  He  knew  what  was  in  man  I  " 

One  of  the  most  fruitful  of  all  our  modern  dis- 
coveries is  that  which  for  the  want  of  a  better 
term  we  call  the  "  subconscious,"  the  submerged 
life  below  the  threshold  of  consciousness.  Some 
wild  things  have  been  said  and  written  about  this 
inside  underworld,  and  the  abnormal  phenomena 
of  the  subliminal  have  perhaps  come  too  much  to 
the  front,  but  the  fact  remains  that  the  normal 
processes  of  the  world  below  the  threshold  are 
as  important  for  the  microcosm  as  the  battlefields 
of  Europe  are  for  the  great  world.  It  is  in  here 
that  destiny  is  settled  and  the  hereafter  is  built. 

We  all  begin  life  with  certain  instinctive  func- 
tions which  are  admirably  adapted  to  ends. 
These  instincts  carry  the  tiny  individual  unerringly 
forward.  They  build  his  future  and  make  his 
wider  career  possible.  How  he  got  them  and 
came  by  them  he  never  asks.  They  are  so  much 
a  part  of  himself  that  he  never  thinks  to  investi- 


Ch.  I]         THE  DEEPER  UNIVERSE  15 

gate  the  mystery.  It  turns  out,  however,  that 
they  are  the  inherited  deposit  of  racial  experience 
and  habit,  the  contribution  of  practical  wisdom 
which  the  immemorial  past  makes  to  the  present. 
The  slow  gains  of  the  ages  are  woven  into  the 
fiber  of  the  newcomer  and  he  pushes  safely  out 
for  his  venturous  voyage  on  the  accumulated  in- 
heritance which  was  piled  up  before  he  arrived. 

Not  less  momentous  and  important  are  the  ac- 
cumulations  of   his   own   growing   emotions   and 
thoughts  and  decisions.     He  is  forever  weaving, 
for  better  or  for  worse,  the  indestructible  stuff 
of  his  inner  subconscious  life,  which,  at  a  later 
time,  without  any  thought  about  it  on  his  part, 
will  steer  and  direct  him  as  certainly  as  his  in- 
herited instincts  did  in  the  baby  stage.     Every 
effort  of  will,  every  struggle  of  attention,  every 
battle  with  temptation  leaves  its  slender  trace  in 
the  structure  of  the  subconscious  world  which  he 
is  building,  and  it  will  be  heard  from  again  in 
some  day  of  crisis  or  in  some  emergency  of  action. 
Nothing  is  lost,  nothing  is  uncounted,  nothing  is 
negligible.     The   tiny  becomes   big  with   impor- 
tance and  the  indiscernibly  little  grows  into  the 
immense.     Every  feat  of  skill  is  the  product  of 
patient  practice,  every  case  of  unerring  judgment 
has  behind  it   a  multitude   of  careful   decisions, 


16  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  I 

every  revelation  of  grace  in  manner  or  disposi- 
tion is  the  slow  fruit  of  pains  and  effort.  The 
saint  is  no  accidental  mutation.  Moral  dexterity 
of  soul  and  beauty  of  character  are  the  result  of 
human  effort  and  of  cooperation  with  God,  as 
surely  as  physical  health  is  the  result  of  corre- 
spondence with  the  conditions  of  life. 

An  ancient  psalmist  prayed  for  truth  in  his  in- 
ward parts.  It  is  a  beautiful  aspiration.  But  the 
way  to  get  truth  in  the  inward  parts  is  to  practice 
truth-telling  as  an  unvarying  habit.  If  one  tells 
the  truth  and  thinks  the  truth  yesterday,  to-day, 
and  to-morrow,  hates  falsehood,  abhors  lying,  and 
sincerely  conforms  to  reality  —  he  need  not  worry 
about  the  outcome.  Truth  is  thus  woven  into 
the  structure  of  the  soul.  The  subconscious  life  is 
builded  toward  truth-telling  and  truth-living,  and 
the  inward  self  inclines  to  truth  as  streams  flow 
to  the  sea.  It  is  no  accident  that  at  last  when 
Christ's  servants  see  his  face  his  name  shall  be 
on  their  foreheads.  There  is  no  caprice  about 
that;  for,  after  all,  the  heavenly  life  is  the  life 
formed  by  the  transformation  of  our  poor,  feeble, 
limited,  imperfect,  sin-defiled  selves  into  some- 
thing approaching  a  likeness  of  that  holy,  perfect 
life  of  his.  How  it  comes  we  cannot  altogether 
tell.     There  are  mystery  and  miracle  in  it.     But 


Ch.  I]         THE  DEEPER  UNIVERSE  17 

it  does  not  "  come  "  without  our  cooperation.  It 
is  not  thrust  upon  us  without  our  choice  and  de- 
cision. Here  again  the  weaving  of  the  character 
and  the  writing  of  the  name  on  the  forehead  are 
the  result  of  saying  "  Yes  "  to  God  and  of  patient 
conformity  to  eternal  laws  of  life. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  WAY  OF  FAITH  AND  LOVE 

I 
THE    CENTRAL   ACT   OF   RELIGION 

Religion  is  too  rich  and  complex  to  be  reduced 
to  any  one  act  or  attitude  or  aspect  of  life.  In 
so  far  as  our  religion  is  real  and  genuine,  it  will 
touch,  heighten,  and  transform  every  feature  of 
our  lives,  and,  if  that  is  so,  we  must  not  expect 
that  we  can  pick  out  one  feature  and  say  here  or 
nowhere  the  consummate  blossom  of  religion  is  to 
be  seen.  But  there  is  one  act  of  life  which  does 
bring  us  in  a  special  and  peculiar  way  into  the 
holy  of  holies  of  religion  —  a  central  act  without 
which  any  person's  religion  will  always  remain 
dwarfed  and  unfulfilled.  This  central  act  is  wor- 
ship. By  worship  I  mean  the  act  of  rising  to  a 
personal,  experimental  consciousness  of  the  real 
presence  of  God  which  floods  the  soul  with  joy 
and  bathes  the  whole  inward  spirit  with  refresh- 
ing streams  of  life.     Never  to  have   felt  that, 

18 


Ch.  II]  FAITH  AND  LOVE  19 

never  to  have  opened  the  life  to  these  incoming 
divine  tides,  never  to  have  experienced  the  joy  of 
personal  fellowship  with  God,  is  surely  to  have 
missed  the  richest  privilege  and  the  highest  beati- 
tude of  religion.  Almost  all  of  our  modern 
forms  of  Christianity  make  too  little  of  this  cen- 
tral act,  and,  with  some  truth,  it  has  been  called 
"  the  lost  art  of  worship."  The  main  reason  for 
the  decline  of  worship  is  the  excessive  desire,  so 
common  to-day,  to  have  something  always  happen- 
ing or,  as  we  often  say,  to  have  something  "  do- 
ing." Hush,  waiting,  meditation,  concentration 
of  spirit,  are  just  the  reverse  of  our  busy,  driving, 
modern  temper.  The  person  who  meditates,  we 
are  apt  to  think,  will  lose  an  opportunity  to  do 
something;  while  he  muses,  the  procession  will  go 
on  and  leave  him  behind.  We  hear  all  the  time 
of  the  vast  human  tasks  that  are  to  be  done;  we 
are  crowded  with  practical  problems,  and  some 
of  us  are  ready  to  identify  religion  with  service; 
we  would  like  to  turn  the  church  into  a  soup- 
house,  or  at  least  into  an  institution  for  minister- 
ing to  the  wants  of  the  neighborhood. 

Another  tendency  into  which  we  easily  fall  is 
that  of  making  religion  consist  of  words,  words, 
words.  Talking  about  God,  expounding  the  ex- 
periences of  them  of  old  time,  saying  apt  and 


ao  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  II 

lovely  things  about  religion,  occupy  us  much  when 
we  come  together,  and  quite  rightly  so.  But  to 
what  purpose  do  we  "  talk  about  God  "  if  none 
of  us  can  pause  in  our  inward  rush  and  find  him, 
actually  meet  with  him  and  enter  into  the  joy 
of  the  Lord?  What  have  we  gained  by  recount- 
ing the  "  experiences  "  of  past  ages  if  nobody  now 
is  to  have  similar  experiences?  It  is  melancholy 
to  hear  of  Bethels  in  the  dim,  far  past  if  we  are 
to  conclude  that  that  ladder  between  the  soul  and 
God  has  been  pulled  up,  or  pulled  down,  and  that 
direct  divine  intercourse  has  ceased.  The  apt  and 
lovely  words  about  religion  have  place  and  mean- 
ing only  if  they  create  in  us  the  passion  and  the 
positive  intention  to  go  ourselves  on  the  spiritual 
pilgrimage,  the  goal  of  which  is  this  holy  of  holies, 
where  words  about  God  fall  away,  since  we  have 
entered  into  the  joy  of  his  real  presence. 

In  the  right  place  and  in  the  proper  degree  we 
may  well  consider  what  are  the  great  truths  of 
our  religion,  what  are  the  structural  ideas  of  our 
faith,  and  it  is  essential  that  we  should  work  out, 
and  work  out  intelligently,  the  ways  and  means, 
the  plans  and  methods,  of  social  service  —  the 
practical  application  of  our  spiritual  insight  to  the 
society  of  our  time  —  but  in  all  these  matters  do 
not  let  us  make  the  fatal  mistake  of  supposing  that 


Ch.  II]  FAITH  AND  LOVE  21 

religion  is  primarily  either  words  or  service.  Re- 
ligion is  primarily,  and  at  heart,  the  personal 
meeting  of  the  soul  with  God.  If  that  experience 
ceases  in  the  world,  religion,  in  its  first  intention, 
is  doomed.  We  may  still  have  ideas  about  the 
God  whom  men  once  knew  intimately,  and  we  may 
still  continue  to  work  for  human  betterment,  but 
there  can  be  living  religion  only  so  long  as  the 
soul  of  man  is  capable  of  experiencing  the  fresh 
bubbling  of  the  living  water  within  and  can  know 
for  himself  that  a  heart  of  eternal  love  beats  in 
the  central  deeps  of  the  universe  within  his  reach. 

To  give  up  the  cultivation  of  worship,  then, 
means  in  the  long  run  the  loss  of  the  central  thing 
in  religion;  it  involves  the  surrender  of  the  price- 
less jewel  of  the  soul.  In  its  stead  we  may  per- 
fect many  other  things ;  we  may  make  our  form  of 
divine  service,  as  we  call  it,  very  artistic  and  very 
popular;  we  may  speak  with  the  tongues  of  men 
and  sing  with  the  tongues  almost  of  angels,  but  if 
we  lose  the  power  to  discover  and  appreciate  the 
real  presence  of  God  and  if  we  miss  the  supreme 
joy  of  feeling  ourselves  environed  by  the  Spirit 
of  the  living  and  present  God,  we  have  made  a  bad 
exchange  and  have  dropped  from  a  higher  to  a 
lower  type  of  religion. 

There   is  no   doubt  that,   as  with   all  the   su- 


22  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  II 

premely  great  things,  the  act  of  worship  calls  for 
intense  devotion,  for  unusual  concentration,  for 
long-continued  spiritual  preparation.  If  it  is,  as 
I  believe,  the  very  goal  and  pinnacle  of  religion  — 
the  flowering  of  the  tree  of  life  —  then  we  must 
not  expect  that  it  will  cost  nothing  or  that  it  will 
be  reached  along  lines  of  least  resistance.  Reli- 
gion has  always  demanded,  for  its  best  things,  the 
absolute  price.  There  is  no  finding  without  los- 
ing; there  is  no  getting  without  giving;  there  is 
no  living  without  dying.  For  a  few  dollars  we 
can  get  a  book  on  religion;  for  a  few  more  dollars 
we  can  get  some  one  to  talk  to  us  about  the  things 
of  religion;  but  what  we  cannot  get  for  dollars, 
however  high  we  heap  them,  is  this  experience 
which  is  the  heart  of  religion,  this  experience  of 
God,  this  practice  of  the  divine  presence,  this  joy 
of  being  ourselves  in  the  holy  of  holies. 

II 

FAITH    AS    A   WAY   OF    LIFE 

Some  persons  think  of  faith  as  a  mark  of  weak- 
ness. To  their  minds  it  is  a  form,  or  relic,  of 
superstition  —  a  diet  of  "milk"  to  be  discarded 
for  the  "  strong  meat "  of  knowledge  as  soon  as 
one   is   full-grown.     There    are   many   grown-up 


Ch.  II]  FAITH  AND  LOVE  23 

boys  and  girls  who  pride  themselves  on  having 
outgrown  the  need  of  this  old-fashioned  article. 
"  When  I  was  a  child,"  they  grandly  say,  "  I 
thought  as  a  child,  but  when  I  reached  the  age  of 
manhood  I  put  away  childish  things.  I  mean  to 
accept  nothing  now  which  I  cannot  know." 

That  general  program,  however,  turns  out  to  be 
very  absurd.  It  will  not  work  for  a  minute.  In- 
stead of  bringing  emancipation,  it  makes  life  a 
poor  rope  of  sand,  with  no  power  whatever  to  it. 
A  little  thought  and  insight  would  show  this  per- 
son, who  is  so  eager  to  graduate  from  his  child- 
hood stage,  that  all  his  knowledge  and  all  his 
activities  are  penetrated  through  and  through 
with  faith.  He  cannot  move  a  step  without  it;  he 
cannot  even  start  to  think  without  it.  He  must 
trust  the  evidence  of  his  senses.  He  must  have 
faith  that  there  is  a  world  which  corresponds  to 
his  impressions  of  sight  and  touch,  of  taste  and 
smell.  He  must  assume  and  believe  that  what  is 
outside  and  beyond  his  mind  fits  what  is  inside. 
Who  can  ever  "  prove  "  to  him  that  the  world 
actually  is  precisely  the  way  it  looks?  Nobody. 
That  is  a  mighty  venture  of  faith  which  we  all 
must  make.  We  must  live  in  the  belief  that  the 
world  outside  the  mind  and  inside  the  mind  make 
together  one  whole  and  coherent  world. 


24  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  II 

Science,  too,  involves  faith  at  every  point  of  its 
structure.  All  the  tools,  the  instruments,  the  ma- 
chinery of  science  must  be  taken  as  a  venture  of 
faith.  The  greatest  tool  it  uses  is  the  principle  of 
cause  —  everything  in  the  universe  must  have  a 
cause  and  must  be  explained  by  its  cause.  But 
that  universal  principle  of  science  never  has  been 
"  proved,"  and,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  never 
can  be  "  proved."  It  is  assumed  as  a  working 
principle  and  used  on  a  venture  of  faith.  There 
is  no  doubt  that  it  works  very  well,  but  it  is  never- 
theless faith  applied  to  science.  The  "  laws  "  of 
the  universe  which  science  spells  out  are  never  seen 
with  the  eye  or  touched  with  the  hand.  They  are 
not  material  "  things."  They  are  as  invisible  and 
intangible  as  God  himself  is.  They  are  in  the 
sphere  of  faith  rather  than  in  the  sphere  of  knowl- 
edge. We  have  no  way  of  "  knowing  "  that  the 
laws  of  nature  will  always  remain  uniform,  will 
always  work  as  they  do  now,  will  always  be  re- 
liable and  trustworthy.  No  amount  of  experi- 
ence could  ever  "  prove  "  that.  We  make  the 
great  venture  of  faith  that  it  is  so  and  act  upon  it 
and  it  works  well,  and  on  the  basis  of  it  we  predict 
future  events. 

Faith  is  still  more  evident  as  a  working  energy 
in  the  practical  matters  of  life.     Society  could  not 


Ch.  II]  FAITH  AND  LOVE  25 

exist  an  hour  on  a  bare  "  knowledge  "  basis.  All 
banks  would  suspend,  all  laws  would  become  in- 
valid, the  world  would  be  turned  into  a  vast  insane 
asylum,  each  individual  living  in  solitary  isolation 
in  the  whirl  of  his  own  ideas.  Marriage  and 
home-building  are  beautiful  instances  of  faith. 
No  one  ever  "  knows,"  or  can  "  know,"  that  in 
the  stress  of  years,  in  the  give  and  take  of  life,  in 
the  lights  and  shadows  of  this  world  of  mutabil- 
ity, the  friend  of  his  youthful  fancy  will  grow 
dearer  and  truer,  more  inwardly  beautiful  and  in- 
dispensable to  him,  and  that  their  two  individual 
lives  and  wills  will  merge  into  an  indivisible  union. 
Marriage  is  of  necessity  a  venture  of  faith,  as  is 
friendship  of  every  sort.  That  does  not  mean 
that  it  is  a  mere  hazard,  a  blind  guess.  It  too 
often  is  so,  no  doubt,  but  that  is  because  the  per- 
sons marrying  make  a  hazard  and  are  not  guided 
by  real  faith. 

Real  faith  —  faith  which  carries  in  itself  a  con- 
structive energy  —  always  builds  on  solid  founda- 
tions and  can  test  its  building  as  it  builds.  Mar- 
riage is  always  a  hazard,  a  chance  —  to  use  the 
current  society  word,  it  is  "a  gamble" — unless 
the  two  persons  who  are  to  marry  have  already  a 
sufficient  experience  of  love  and  friendship  with 
each  other  to  warrant  the  faith  that  their  intended 


26  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  II 

future  will  increase  in  worth  and  joy.  If  mar- 
riages are  made  for  money  or  for  beauty  or  social 
standing,  there  is,  of  course,  very  little  ground  for 
faith  in  a  happy  future  union  which  will  grow  truer 
and  deeper  as  the  years  go.  But  if  the  two  lives 
have  already  found  each  other  and  are  united  in 
common  interests,  in  genuine  friendship,  in  happy 
personal  fellowship;  if  their  love  has  its  roots  in 
moral  character  and  not  in  surface  traits,  the  step 
is  still  a  venture  of  faith,  but  it  is  a  faith  guaran- 
teed and  tested  by  experience.  Faith  in  this  case 
is  merely  building  out  upon  the  solid  pillars  of  ex- 
perience. It  is  the  power  to  see  and  to  appreciate 
and  to  trust  what  still  remains  hidden  from  us  in 
the  life  we  have  already  proved.  It  is  a  well- 
grounded  belief  that  the  future  will  bring  out 
and  fulfill  what  the  life  we  have  come  to  know 
promises  and  prophesies.  We  trust  the  un- 
seen to  complete  the  seen,  and  we  make  our 
venture. 

Religious  faith  in  its  highest  and  best  sense  is 
of  this  type.  It  is  not  blind  groping,  haphazard 
believing.  It  is  building  out  upon  the  solid  pil- 
lars of  the  soul's  experience.  It  is  the  soul's 
power  to  see  what  fits  and  fulfills  and  completes 
what  is  already  here.  Our  very  finite  nature  calls 
for  a  world  of  infinite  reality  to  fulfill  it.     Our 


Ch.  II]  FAITH  AND  LOVE  27 

hunger  and  thirst  of  soul  reveal  something  in  us 
which  no  earthly  supplies  can  satisfy.  Our  sins 
and  failures  and  frailties  call  for  the  help  and 
healing  of  a  divine  Savior.  We  are  made  so  that 
we  cannot  live  without  streams  of  spiritual  energy, 
without  the  incoming  of  saving  grace  and  trans- 
forming power.  We  cannot  be  victorious  and 
triumphant  without  a  heavenly  Friend,  a  divine 
Companion.  And  in  our  need,  in  our  stress,  he 
offers  himself  to  us.  He  comes  with  his  help 
and  healing.  He  seems  completely  to  fit  our  need. 
But  only  a  venture  of  faith  can  settle  the  matter 
for  us.  He  has  saved  others.  He  has  enabled 
others  to  more  than  conquer.  It  is  a  safe  ven- 
ture, and  it  stands  and  vindicates  every  test. 

Ill 

A   RELIGION   WHICH    DOES    THINGS 

In  his  recent  book,  A  Challenge  to  the  Church, 
William  Temple  says : 

"  The  religious  experience,  which  is  indeed  the  soul 
of  personal  religion,  does  not  consist  in  passing  states, 
but  is  what  the  name  should  imply  —  an  experience  whole 
and  entire  which  is  religious  through  and  through,  so 
that  our  experience  of  business,  of  politics,  of  art,  and 
of  all  human  relationships  becomes  a  religious  experience." 


28  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  II 

He  goes  on  further  to  say  that  the  exalted  mo- 
ments of  high-tide  experience,  when  the  soul  feels 
flooded  with  unusual  incomes  of  divine  life, 
"  should  be  merely  moments  perpetually  renewing 
the  light  in  which  we  see  the  world  and  the  vital 
strength  by  which  we  live  among  men." 

This  is  a  modern  way  of  saying  what  was  so 
wonderfully  said  in  a  letter  written  on  the  shores 
of  the  iEgean  Sea  by  a  man  who  was  "  fighting 
beasts  "  in  an  ancient  city,  "  dying  daily  "  with 
crucifying  struggles,  and  perpetually  confronted 
with  entrenched  evils  and  iniquitous  customs.  On 
top  of  his  load  of  perplexities  in  Ephesus  had  just 
been  piled  the  news  of  the  growing  disintegration 
of  his  church  across  the  sea  in  Corinth.  A  tale  of 
woe  was  pouring  in  —  now  from  "  the  house  of 
Chloe,"  now  again  from  a  delegation  of  the 
church  sent  over  to*- ask  help,  and  finally  through 
an  epistle  which  some  of  his  friends  wrote  to  him. 
It  becomes  only  too  clear  that  much  "  wood,  hay, 
and  stubble  "  had  been  built  in  with  the  purer 
saintly  material  there.  Divisions  and  conten- 
tions were  playing  havoc.  Crass  immoralities, 
well  known  in  that  environment,  were  assailing 
the  members.  Unanswerable  metaphysical  ques- 
tions were  confusing  their  minds,   and  practical 


Ch.  II]  FAITH  AND  LOVE  29 

problems    of   organization   and   procedure   were 
urgently  pressing  for  solution. 

Somewhere  in  a  little  room  of  a  private  house 
—  perhaps  of  a  certain  Mary  then  living  in  Ephe- 
sus,  "  who  bestowed  much  labor  upon  us  " —  the 
marvelous  message  was  written  to  those  "  called 
to  be  saints  "  in  Corinth.  The  thing  I  preached 
among  you  in  those  months  of  fellowship,  he  tells 
them,  was  not  a  novel  philosophy  subject  to  end- 
less debate.  I  made  you  acquainted  with  a  new 
power  of  life,  an  energy  of  salvation  that  demon- 
strates itself  through  the  whole  life  of  the  whole 
man,  until  the  entire  personality,  body  and  all, 
becomes  a  temple,  a  place  where  the  Spirit  of  God 
is  manifested.  This  religion  of  life  and  demon- 
stration, expressed  everywhere  in  this  iEgean  let- 
ter, comes  to  its  full  splendor  of  expression  in  the 
thirteenth  chapter,  where  the  beauty  of  the  style 
suddenly  reveals  the  greatness  of  the  soul  of  the 
man,  as  great  style  always  does.  Religion,  as  it 
comes  to  light  in  this  extraordinary  passage,  is 
not  some  rare  exalted  state,  some  startling  ecstasy, 
some  spectacular  wonder  granted  to  a  favorite 
saint.  Many  persons  coveted  this  high  state  and 
strained  after  it.  They  looked  upon  the  striking 
"  gift  of  tongues,"  the  power  to  speak  some  celes- 


30  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  II 

tial  language  such  as  angels  speak,  as  the  very  pin- 
nacle of  religion.  It  is  not  so,  these  great  words 
tell  them.  One  may  attain  that  goal,  achieve  that 
state,  and  still  be  only  like  "  a  noisy  gong  "  that 
attracts  attention.  Nor  again  is  religion  to  be 
found  in  a  signal  acquisition  of  knowledge.  One 
may  understand  the  mysteries  and  unravel  the  se- 
crets of  nature  and  yet  fail  to  arrive  anywhere. 
He  may  be  able  to  extend  his  powers  of  vision  by 
aid  of  microscope  and  telescope;  he  may  invent 
engines  which  add  unsuspected  powers  of  speed 
to  his  legs;  he  may  construct  mechanisms  that 
carry  his  voice  with  amazing  quickness  across 
wide  spaces;  he  may  fly  faster  and  farther  than 
any  bird.  And  yet  all  this  may  bring  no  incre- 
ment to  his  soul.  With  all  his  added  range  of 
knowledge,  he  himself,  in  all  that  really  concerns 
life,  may  be  a  zero  — "  nothing.'' 

Religion  is  not  found  then,  is  not  revealed,  in 
an  isolated  and  separable  aspect  of  life.  It  is  a 
way  of  living  which  affects  the  whole  of  life,  inner 
and  outer,  in  all  its  attitudes  and  relationships. 
If  one  word  is  to  be  found  which  gathers  up  and 
expresses  this  complete  spiritualization  of  life,  the 
best  word  for  it  is  St.  Paul's  untranslatable  agape, 
which  means  a  living  power  flowing  through  all 
the  activities  of  daily  life,  touching  every  aspect, 


Ch.  II]  FAITH  AND  LOVE  31 

transforming  every  relationship,  and  bringing  a 
vital  strength  into  every  cooperative  effort.  We 
translate  it  as  "  love,"  but  we  must  not  think  of 
it  as  "  a  soft  and  cooing  "  thing,  an  emotional 
state,  or  sentimental  gush.  It  is  primarily  power. 
It  is  energy  expressing  itself  in  action. 

In  fact,  the  only  way  to  grasp  its  meaning  ade- 
quately is  to  turn  to  the  supreme  exhibition  of  it 
and  that  is  in  Christ  crucified,  where  the  power  of 
God  making  men  saved  comes  to  full  revelation. 
One  typical  race  looked  for  God  in  rare  and  spec- 
tacular events,  in  signs  and  wonders.  Another 
group  expected  to  find  him  through  speculation 
and  dialectic,  and  thrilled  over  the  construction  of 
vast  intellectual  systems.  But  no  external  "  sign  " 
can  reveal  God's  character.  No  system  of  knowl- 
edge can  bring  to  light  the  inner  nature  of  the 
Eternal  Heart.  Only  experience  will  suffice  for 
that,  and  an  experience  of  it  is  possible  only  if 
God  himself  breaks  through  somewhere  in  the 
universe  and  reveals  the  heart  we  seek  in  a  life 
we  can  appreciate  and  interpret.  Christ  is  the 
place  in  the  universe  where  God  himself  breaks 
through  and  shows  the  power  of  love  in  full  oper- 
ation. Not  as  storm  and  thunder,  not  as  fire  and 
earthquake,  but  as  love,  that  suffers  long  and  is 
kind  and  will  not  let  go,  does  God  come  to  seek 


32  THE  WORLD  WITHIN         [Ch.  II 

us  and  find  us  and  save  us.  We  could  go  on  in 
our  sin  and  stand  anything  but  that.  When  that 
love  is  clearly  seen  and  felt  and  known,  it  con- 
quers, and  it  more  than  conquers.  It  becomes  the 
most  dynamic  moral  force  in  the  universe.  It 
saves,  it  renews,  it  transforms,  it  vitalizes,  it  spir- 
itualizes. It  works  the  one  real  miracle  which 
proves  that  God  has  come.  It  makes  out  of  men 
like  us  persons  who  can  exhibit  and  transmit  the 
same  love  which  saved  us.  We  discover  how  to 
become  living  epistles  of  the  thirteenth  of  First 
Corinthians ! 

IV 

THE   GOSPEL   OF    GOD   WITH    US 

In  one  of  the  most  wonderful  passages  ever 
written  by  anybody  (2  Cor.  III.  5),  St.  Paul  con- 
trasts the  two  types  of  religion,  one  of  which  he 
calls  "  the  ministry  of  condemnation,"  and  the 
other  "  the  ministry  of  righteousness  ";  one  "  the 
ministry  of  the  letter,"  the  other  "  the  ministry  of 
the  spirit";  one  "the  ministry  of  the  old  cove- 
nant," which  is  passing  away,  the  other  "  the  min- 
istry of  the  new  covenant,"  which  remains.  The 
primary  difference  between  the  two  types  of  reli- 
gion lies  for  him  in  the  fact  that  the  "  old,"  as 


Ch.  II]  FAITH  AxND  LOVE  33 

he  calls  it,  is  external.     It  is  a  legal  system  writ- 
ten in  graven  letters  —  imposed  from  without  by 
a  lawgiver  and  to  be  followed  in  detail  under  the 
expectation  of  death  as  the  penalty  of  disobedi- 
ence.    The  mark  and  badge  of  it,  he  says,  is  al- 
ways slavery,  and,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
system  is  "  obeyed,"  the  heart  behind  the  veil  re- 
mains all  the  time  unchanged  and  untransformed. 
The  "  new,"  on  the  other  hand,  is  fundamen- 
tally inward  and  of  the  spirit.     Instead  of  a  law- 
giver who  fulminates  commands,  with  terror  of 
condemnation,  the  God  of  all  mercy  and  tender- 
ness "  shines  into  our  hearts  to  give  the  light  of 
his    glorious    knowledge    in    the    face    of    Jesus 
Christ."     And  his  revelation  of  light  and  grace 
and  glory  and  righteousness  does  not  remain  out- 
side us  as  something  foreign  and  external,  but  it 
becomes  a  formative  life  and  power  in  us  and 
makes  us  a  living  letter,  or  epistle,  of  Jesus  Christ, 
with  the   new  ministry  of  glory  written   in  the 
inmost  substance  of  our  being,  so  that  the  Chris- 
tian himself,  and  not  a  written  document,  is  the 
exhibition  of  the  message  or  covenant  —  the  be- 
liever himself  is  the  document.     But,  unlike  the 
"  old  "  written  code,  the  new  document  undergoes 
change  and  is  capable  of  progress,  for  as  the  be- 
liever —  the  living  epistle  —  lives  unveiled  in  the 


34  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  II 

presence  of  the  luminous  Christ,  he  is  changed  into 
an  ever-growing  likeness  by  the  working  of  the 
Spirit  within  him.  He  goes  from  glory  to  glory 
in  an  ever-heightening  transformation  of  spirit, 
until  men  see  in  him  the  marks  of  the  Lord  Jesus. 
But  there  is  no  slavery  here,  for  where  the  spirit 
of  the  Lord  is  there  are  liberty  and  inward  free- 
dom, and  obedience  becomes  a  thing  of  joy. 

Once  you  enter  upon  this  ministry  of  the  new 
covenant  —  the     ministry    which    liberates     and 
which  changes  the  minister  himself  into  an  epistle 
of  Jesus  Christ  —  you  no  longer  "  faint"  in  the 
presence    of    difficulties    and    misunderstandings: 
"  having  obtained  this  ministry  we  faint  not."     It 
is  possible  now  to  be  "  pressed  on  every  side,  yet 
not  straitened;  to  be  perplexed,  but  not  unto  de- 
spair; to  be  smitten  down,  yet  not  destroyed,  al- 
ways bearing  about  in  the  body  the  dying  of  Jesus, 
so  that  the  life  also  of  Jesus  is  manifested  in  our 
bodies !  "     That  is  the  supreme  boldness  of  St. 
Paul's  wonderful  message,  that  the  life  of  Jesus 
can  be  so  written  in  us  that  we  can  manifest  it 
11  in  our  mortal  bodies  " ;  that  the  dying  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  can  be  "borne  about"  in  our  lives 
as  we  live  among  men. 

Suddenly  he  rises  to  a  new  height,  as  though 
at  that  point  a  fresh  inspiration  swept  over  him, 


Ch.  II]  FAITH  AND  LOVE  35 

like  a  new  sun  risen  on  mid-noon.  He  now  real- 
izes, apparently  for  the  first  time,  that  this  new 
inward  man,  this  hidden  unseen  self  which  the 
Spirit  forms  in  us  in  likeness  to  the  image  and 
glory  of  Christ,  will  be  a  permanent  and  eternal 
self,  capable  of  surviving  "  the  decaying  of  our 
outward  man."  If  that  is  so,  then  the  "  dissolv- 
ing of  our  outward  tent,"  the  fleshly  body,  is  a 
matter  of  no  special  concern,  for  we  shall  not  be 
"  naked,"  or  "  uncovered,"  when  that  is  gone, 
since  by  this  inward  spiritual  process  God  has 
been  constructing  in  us  an  immortal,  eternal,  heav- 
enly house  or  habitation,  so  that,  even  with  the 
body  gone,  we  shall  be  "  clothed  "  with  our  heav- 
enly house.  God  made  us  for  this  very  thing, 
that  mortality  might  be  swallowed  up  of  life,  and 
in  so  far  as  we  are  changed  into  the  divine  image 
we  have  formed  a  permanent  and  ever-enduring 
inward  self,  which  is  always  "  at  home  with  the 
Lord." 

That  is  St.  Paul's  new  ministry,  which,  he 
rightly  claims,  "  far  exceeds  in  glory  "  the  old 
ministry  of  the  letter.  It  is  certainly  bold  and 
daring,  and  it  is  still  far  beyond  the  slow  faith 
and  vision  of  most  of  us,  who  easily  hark  back  to 
the  literal,  the  tangible,  and  the  external.  We 
are  still  too  unbelieving  for  "  the  light  of  the  gos- 


36  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  II 

pel  of  the  glory  of  Christ,  who  is  the  image  of 
God,  to  dawn  in  us."  We  talk  of  our  new  the- 
ologies and  our  old  theologies,  but  these  party- 
lines,  these  middle  walls  of  partition,  would  all 
fall  away  and  vanish  if  we  could  rise  to  this  gospel 
of  the  new  covenant  —  which  is  the  transforma- 
tion of  a  man  like  us  into  a  living  document  which 
manifests  Christ,  and  into  an  immortal  self  which 
in  any  world  will  be  "  at  home  with  the  Lord." 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  WAY  OF  DEDICATION 

I 

THE    INNER    COMPULSION 

No  life  amounts  to  anything  until  it  becomes 
absorbed  in  some  aim  which  carries  it  out  of  and 
beyond  itself.  The  man  who  is  occupied  in  con- 
suming three  meals  a  day,  in  dressing  his  body, 
and  in  giving  it  its  due  quota  of  comfortable  sleep 
is  superior  to  the  oyster  only  in  corporeal  size; 
they  are  both  biological  specimens,  only  one  is 
larger  and  more  complicated  than  the  other,  and, 
because  of  his  larger  power,  one  of  them  can  eat 
the  other!  Now,  if  this  biological  man  is  ever 
to  rise  above  the  biological  level  and  be  something 
more,  he  must  discover  a  way  of  living  which 
delivers  him  from  the  mere  play  of  natural  forces 
—  the  mere  pursuit  of  materials  for  the  animal 
life  —  and  this  lays  upon  him  an  inner  compul- 
sion to  devote  himself  to  an  ideal;  that  is,  to  an 
unselfish  and  spiritual  cause,  a  cause  for  the  pro- 

37 


38  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  Ill 

motion  and  advancement  of  interests  other  than 
his  own.  Nobody  gets  out  of  the  biological  or- 
der of  life  until  in  some  degree  he  has  learned  to 
say:     "  For  their  sakes  I  consecrate  myself." 

There  are,  of  course,  many  degrees  and  scales 
of  this  struggle  for  the  life  of  others,  this  conse- 
cration to  unselfish  causes,  this  way  of  living  for 
aims  that  are  enlarging  and  spiritual.  Many  a 
person  finds  that  his  occupation  not  only  supplies 
him  with  food  and  clothing,  but  also  gives  him 
opportunities  for  the  consecrated  life.  The  shoe- 
maker who  makes  an  absolutely  honest  shoe,  not 
merely  because  he  wants  his  wages,  but  still  more 
because  he  wants  the  little  unknown  child  that  is 
to  wear  it  to  have  a  solid  and  durable  shoe,  who 
therefore  pegs  and  stitches  his  own  spirit  of  hon- 
esty into  his  piece  of  work  —  that  man  has  risen 
above  the  biological  scale  and  has  found  a  way 
of  living  a  life  which  has  a  touch  of  consecration 
upon  it. 

The  sweeper  of  city  streets  is,  often  enough,  no 
doubt,  a  dull,  stupid  man  who  goes  to  his  work 
with  hardly  more  enthusiasm  than  the  mule  shows, 
and  sweeps  because  he  would  starve  if  he  did  not 
work.  But  every  now  and  then  there  is  a  sweeper 
of  another  type  —  a  real  "  white  angel  "  who 
knows  that  city  dust  is  laden  with  deadly  germs 


Ch.  Ill]  DEDICATION  39 

and  disease,  and  that  unless  this  dust  is  well  and 
carefully  swept  away  it  will  endanger  the  lives  of 
the  city;  and  he  knows,  too,  that  in  sweeping  it  he 
is  risking  his  own  life.  In  spite  of  that,  he  sweeps 
in  the  dark  corners  even  when  no  inspector  watches 
him,  and  forgets  his  own  life  in  consecration  to 
the  safety  of  others.  He  belongs  somewhere  in 
the  order  of  those  unselfish  and  spiritual  knights 
who  have  lost  themselves  to  find  themselves. 
"  Telephone  girls  "  do  not  usually  impress  us  as 
consecrated,  but  when,  as  happened  a  few  years 
ago  in  a  terrible  crisis  which  threatened  two  towns 
with  annihilation,  two  of  these  exchange  girls 
stayed  at  their  post  and  risked  their  own  lives  to 
warn  the  citizens  to  flee  before  the  oncoming  wall 
of  water,  we  must  feel  that  they  had  formed  and 
cultivated  a  way  of  living  which  took  them  out  of 
self  and  consecrated  them  to  unselfish  aims. 

We  stand  almost  appalled  at  the  bald  selfish- 
ness which  is  wrecking  so  many  American  homes. 
The  number  of  cases  in  which  the  decree  of  di- 
vorce follows  hard  after  the  words,  "  until  death 
do  us  part,"  has  become  ominous  and  staggering. 
But  we  must  not  overlook  nor  forget  the  millions 
of  happy  homes  in  which  men  and  women  are  con- 
secrated through  love;  in  which  husband  and  wife 
toil  and  sacrifice  for  each  other  and  for  their  chil- 


4o  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  Ill 

dren  in  radiant  joy,  and  in  which,  through  sick- 
ness and  death,  through  poverty  and  privation, 
through  loss  and  sorrow,  as  well  as  in  sunshine  and 
prosperity,  two  persons  have  ceased  to  be  two 
"  units  "  and  are  devoted  to  each  other  in  self- 
forgetful  love.  Here,  again,  is  consecration  of 
no  mean  order. 

It  is  almost  nineteen  hundred  years  since  a  little 
band  of  men  who  heard  "  words  of  life  "  from  the 
lips  of  a  wonderful  Teacher  forsook  their  nets 
and  boats  and  fishing-tackle  to  follow  him  and, 
through  consecration  to  him  and  his  cause,  found 
themselves  on  a  new  spiritual  level.  Sometimes 
the  Church  has  failed  to  realize  its  mission  and  has 
been  content  to  appeal  to  the  self-side  in  men  and 
to  offer  them  an  easy  means  of  passage  from  a 
world  of  woe  to  a  haven  of  refuge  and  a  scene 
of  peace  and  joy;  and  it  may  be  that  even  now  the 
Church  is  too  much  commercialized  and  permeated 
with  a  spirit  of  refined  self-seeking;  but  still,  as 
of  old  on  the  shores  of  Gennesaret,  men,  when  they 
hear  this  Christ  call,  leave  all  with  joy  and  follow 
him.  There  are  plenty  of  Christians,  no  doubt, 
whose  religion  is  formal  and  traditional  and  with- 
out much  insight;  many  who  blindly  hold  truths 
for  which  nobler  men  have  suffered  and  died;  but, 
nevertheless,  there  is  a  goodly  number  of  men  and 


Ch.  Ill]  DEDICATION  41 

women  who  are  Christians  by  first-hand  experi- 
ence, Christians  who  through  Christ  have  found 
God  and  have  consecrated  themselves  with  joy  to 
do  his  will  and  to  lose  themselves  that  they  may 
find  themselves  in  him. 

II 

THE   ALL    FOR   THE   ALL 

Religion  —  above  all,  Christ's  religion  —  is 
not  something  which  can  thrive  on  a  "  fifty-fifty  " 
basis.  That  simple  Brother  of  the  Common  Life, 
Thomas  a  Kempis,  was  profoundly  right  when  he 
said  four  hundred  years  ago,  "  We  must  give  the 
all  for  the  All."  The  great  religious  leaders,  the 
persons  who  have  started  a  new  line  of  march, 
have  always  known  that  truth,  and  it  was  their 
practice  of  it  which  more  than  anything  else  made 
them  religious  leaders.  The  Laodicean,  neither 
hot  nor  cold,  economical  of  spiritual  zeal  and  exer- 
cising no  more  faith  than  is  absolutely  required 
for  conventional  religious  purposes,  with  one  eye 
on  the  main  chance  here  below  and  the  other 
turned  feebly  on  the  celestial  gate,  is  a  well-known 
type  of  Christian.  But,  however  common  the 
type  may  be,  it  is  a  pitiable,  miserable  failure. 


42  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  Ill 

"  Surely  they  see  not  God,  I  know, 

Nor  all  the  chivalry  of  His, 
The  soldier  saints  who,  row  on  row, 

Burn  upward  each  to  his  point  of  bliss  — 
Since,  the  end  of  life  being  manifest, 

He  had  cut  his  way  through  the  world  to  this." 

Nowhere   does  this  virile,   all-for-All  way  of 
life  find  such  striking  emphasis  and  illustration  as 
in  the  sayings  and  in  the  practice  of  the  great 
Galilean.     Religion   for  him  is  not  an  unneces- 
sary luxury;  it  is  the  staff  of  life,  the  bread  and 
water  by  which  men  live.     The  "  whole  world  " 
set  over  against  this  indispensable  life  of  the  soul 
weighs  nothing.     Even  the  eye  that  hinders  the 
soul  is  to  be  bored  out  and  the  hand  that  inter- 
feres with  the  central  life  is  to  be  hacked  off  and 
flung  away,  because  there  is  only  one  focal  thing 
in  the  universe  that  matters  and  toward  which  all 
energies  must  bend.     Two  very  simple,  yet  very 
profound,  parables  are  told  by  the  Master  to  illus- 
trate this  principle  of  giving  the  all  for  the  All. 
A  man  casually  digging  in  a  field  hits  upon   a 
buried  treasure  which  in  some  earlier  time  of  war 
had  been   hastily  hidden   in  the   ground   as   the 
owner    fled    before    the    invading    enemy.     The 
finder,  thrilling  with  joy  over  his  happy  discovery, 
goes  and  sells  all  that  he  possesses  and  invests 


Ch.  Ill]  DEDICATION  43 

everything  in  the  field  which  contains  his  treasure. 
Another  man,  watching  the  pearl-divers  come  into 
port  laden  with  their  "  finds,"  sees  with  his  trained 
eye,  among  the  many  ordinary  pearls,  one  price- 
less pearl.  He  hurries  home,  disposes  of  all  his 
stock  of  goods,  sells  his  shop  and  bit  of  land,  and 
goes  back  to  the  divers  and  buys  that  lustrous 
pearl  of  great  price  which  is  worth  all  other  pos- 
sessions. Those  are  Christ's  figures  to  illustrate 
the  true  attitude  of  the  soul  toward  the  kingdom 
of  God,  the  highest  vision  and  ideal  of  life.  It 
must  not  take  its  place  alongside  of  other  things 
and  stand  on  a  competitive  level  with  them.  It 
must  rise  high  over  all  and  become  the  absorbing 
goal  and  central  pursuit  of  the  soul.  That  is,  be- 
yond question,  the  secret  of  spiritual  power.  The 
religion  that  costs  nothing,  that  demands  no  hard 
sacrifices  of  other  things,  that  does  not  lift  the  life 
out  of  low-level  motives,  is  worth  little  and  makes 
little  difference  to  the  life.  The  type  of  religion, 
on  the  other  hand,  which  costs  the  all,  which  makes 
the  cross  the  central  fact  that  dominates  the  life  as 
its  one  driving  power,  becomes  an  incalculable 
force  and  turns  many  to  salvation.  We  have  been 
trying  to  get  on  with  the  "  fifty-fifty  "  scheme. 
We  have  endeavored  to  take  over  ease  with  our 
comfortable    religious    faith.     We    have    scaled 


44  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  Ill 

down  the  demands  to  attract  the  economically 
minded.  But  it  is  now,  as  always,  a  false  trail 
and  an  abortive  undertaking.  We  must  return 
to  Thomas  a  Kempis's  principle  and  learn  to  give 
the  all  for  the  All.  We  must  go  back  still  farther 
to  the  way  set  forth  by  a  greater  than  the  Brother 
of  the  Common  Life  and  make  everything  else  in 
the  universe  yield  to  the  central  call  of  the  king- 
dom of  God. 

Sacrifice  for  its  own  sake  is  asceticism.  Sur- 
render, mortification,  crucifixion  as  a  dumb  nega- 
tion of  life  cannot  be  recommended.  It  is  always 
better  to  live  in  the  yea  than  to  live  in  the  nay, 
where  the  yea  is  possible.  But  when  a  clear  col- 
lision comes,  when  life  forces  a  choice  between  the 
soul's  true  destiny  and  all  else,  then  there  must  be 
a  surrender  of  everything  which  tends  to  anchor 
the  soul  to  its  inland  harbor  when  it  should  be 
sailing  the  open  sea  with  God  —  the  all  must  go 
for  the  sake  of  the  All !  This  higher  way  of  life, 
this  capacity  to  see  real  value,  to  let  the  bird  in 
the  hand  go  for  the  sake  of  catching  the  two  in 
the  bush,  this  power  to  live  by  the  unseen  and  to 
insist  on  having  God  or  nothing  —  that  is  what 
we  mean  by  "  faith. " 

That  it  "  works  "  there  can  be  no  doubt.  That 
it  produces  a  new  quality  of  soul  must  be  admitted. 


Ch.  Ill]  DEDICATION  45 

The  spiritual  experts  have  one  testimony  to  give. 
For  a  sample  opinion  let  us  take  the  account  of  a 
little-known  eighteenth-century  saint,  Thomas 
Story: 

"  He  called  for  my  life  and  I  offered  it  at  His  foot- 
stool; but  He  gave  it  me  as  a  prey,  with  unspeakable  ad- 
dition. He  called  for  my  will,  and  I  resigned  it  at 
His  call,  but  he  returned  me  His  own  in  token  of  His 
love.  He  called  for  the  world  and  I  laid  it  at  His  feet, 
with  the  crowns  thereof;  I  withheld  them  not  at  the 
beckoning  of  His  hand.  But  mark  the  benefit  of  ex- 
change !  For  he  gave  me,  instead  of  the  earth,  a  kingdom 
of  eternal  peace,  and  in  lieu  of  the  crowns  of  vanity 
a  crown  of  joy.  .  .  .  He  gave  me  joy  which  no  tongue 
can  express  and  peace  which  passeth  understanding.  My 
heart  was  melted  with  the  height  of  comfort;  my  soul 
was  immersed  in  the  depth  of  joy;  my  eyes  overflowed 
with  tears  of  greatest  pleasure.  ...  I  begged  Himself 
and  He  gave  All." 

Ill 

HABAKKUKEANS 

In  a  charming  essay  written  several  years  ago 
Dr.  William  Osier  —  now  Sir  William  —  dealt 
with  two  groups  of  people  whom  he  called,  respec- 
tively, Gallionians  and  Salomics.  The  Gallio- 
nians,  named  from  Gallio  in  Corinth,  who  "  cared 
for  none  of  these  things,"  are,  in  the  famous  doc- 


46  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  Ill 

tor's  essay,  persons  who  are  too  busy  with  the 
affairs  of  this  world  to  give  any  time  or  thought  to 
spiritual  issues.  There  are  surely  many  Gallio- 
nians  among  us  still!  The  Salomics,  named  after 
Salome,  supposed  to  be  the  mother  of  the  sons  of 
Zebedee,  who  asked  Jesus  to  give  the  highest  com- 
missions in  his  gift  to  her  sons,  are  those  persons 
who  look  upon  religion  as  a  way  of  promoting 
themselves,  of  advancing  their  position.  Salome 
meant  well.  She  loved  the  boys  she  had  borne 
and  brought  up  and  she  wanted  to  do  as  well  as 
she  could  for  them.  She  believed,  as  so  many 
mothers  since  her  day  have  believed,  that  the 
great  thing  to  pray  for  and  push  for  in  this  world 
is  visible  success.  She  knew  of  nothing  better  or 
more  to  be  desired  than  position,  place,  and 
power.  She  had  dreamed,  ever  since  she  was  a 
little  girl,  of  a  coming  great  king  who  would  break 
the  yoke  of  Rome,  make  Jerusalem  a  free,  holy 
city,  a  center  of  the  new  age  —  who  would  be  a 
world-ruler,  with  a  splendid  court  on  Mount  Zion. 
What  glory  to  have  two  sons  in  that  court !  Could 
a  mother  aspire  to  any  loftier  triumph  than  to 
have  her  boys  sit  on  either  side  of  the  throne  of 
this  Messianic  king!  What  a  prospect  for  two 
fishermen  of  the  Galilean  lake ! 

It  took  some  courage  to  come  out  with  her  re- 


Ch.  Ill]  DEDICATION  47 

quest,  but  she  had  carried  it  for  weeks  on  her 
heart  and,  at  last  when  the  opportunity  favored, 
it  slipped  oti  her  lips,  and  the  word  was  spoken: 
"  Lord,  grant  that  my  two  sons  may  sit  one  on  thy 
right  hand  and  the  other  on  thy  left,  when  thou 
comest  into  thy  kingdom." 

"  That  is  not  the  right  thing  to  ask,"  is  the 
solemn  answer.  "  It  shows  ignorance  of  the  real 
nature  of  the  kingdom.  He  who  aspires  to  enter 
my  kingdom  must  not  expect  places,  but  suffer- 
ing; not  honors,  but  opportunities  to  sacrifice;  not 
rewards,  but  hard  baptisms.  Are  thy  two  sons 
able  to  suffer  with  me?  " 

The  world  has  never  learned  the  lesson  which 
this  ambitious  mother's  experience  ought  to  teach. 
There  is  still  much  Salomic  religion  in  all  churches. 
The  stress  is  laid  on  rewards;  the  ambition  is  for 
the  glory  of  place.  The  old  ignorance  of  the  real 
nature  of  the  kingdom  is  living  on. 

We  cannot  expect  to  have  a  religion  of  power 
until  we  get  beyond  a  religion  of  selfishness  and 
of  self-seeking.  The  person  who  is  "  saved  "  by 
an  appeal  to  some  selfish  interest  will  need  to  be 
"  saved  "  again,  and  the  saving  process  will  have 
to  be  repeated  until  he  is  saved  from  himself. 
"  Ye  are  not  seeking  the  right  thing  "  would  be 
spoken  to  many  of  us  if  the  Master  were  among 


48  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  Ill 

us  as  of  old.  He  would  ask  if  we  were  ready  for 
our  share  of  toil  and  pain,  ready  for  the  cup  and 
the  baptism;  ready  to  see  the  ambition  for  easy 
glory  blighted  completely;  ready  to  see  everything 
go  but  the  spirit  of  love  and  consecration.  Sa- 
lomic  religion  dies  hard;  it  is  rooted  deep  in  our 
instincts.  Men  have  all  along  been  seeking  for 
harps  and  robes  and  crowns.  They  have  dreamed 
of  golden  streets  and  blissful  mansions.  They 
are  praying  for  rest  and  ease.  Are  they  the  right 
things  to  ask?  Is  it  not  Salome's  blunder  over 
again? 

There  is  still  a  third  type  of  persons  which  Dr. 
Osier  did  not  mention  in  his  essay.  I  shall  call 
them  Habakkukeans.  I  am  sorry  to  use  such  a 
barbaric-looking  and  sounding  word,  but  it  names 
a  very  real  type  and  one  which  we  greatly  need  to 
have  increased.  Through  some  hard  and  tremen- 
dous experience  this  ancient  prophet,  Habakkuk, 
had  discovered  that  the  only  thing  which  matters 
after  all  is  finding  God  and  being  in  close  fellow- 
ship with  him.  Everything  else  may  go  —  if  he 
abides  sure.  Listen  to  his  great  declaration  of 
faith:  "  Although  the  fig-tree  may  not  blossom, 
neither  shall  there  be  any  fruit  in  the  vines;  the 
labor  of  the  olive  shall  fail,  and  the  fields  shall 
yield  no  meat;  the  flock  shall  be  cut  off  from  the 


Ch.  Ill]  DEDICATION  49 

fold,  and  there  shall  be  no  herd  in  the  stalls:  yet 
I  will  rejoice  in  the  Lord  and  joy  in  the  God  of 
my  salvation  —  and  I  will  walk  in  my  high 
places!  "  Here  at  last  selfishness  is  washed  out. 
Religion  is  no  longer  a  successful  system  of  dou- 
ble-entry bookkeeping.  God  is  loved  now  for 
his  own  sake,  and  the  soul  triumphs  whether  the 
bank-account  prospers  or  not.  Satan's  sneer  in 
the  book  of  Job  —  that  pious  people  never  serve 
God  for  naught,  but  have  an  eye  out  for  returns  — 
is  well  answered.  Here  is  a  stalwart  man  whose 
known  biography  could  be  written  on  a  thumb-nail 
but  whose  faith  shines  like  a  beacon  across  the 
dead  centuries.  He  flung  out  that  great  word, 
which  furnished  both  St.  Paul  and  Martin  Luther 
with  a  watchword :  "  The  righteous  man  shall 
live  by  his  faith."  Everything  else  can  be  dis- 
pensed with  if  only  faith  in  God  remains,  for  a 
man  can  live  by  that! 

The  white  soul,  the  purified  inner  nature,  the 
heart  aflame  with  love  for  God,  the  whole  self 
consecrated  to  service  —  these  are  the  things  to 
seek.  To  have  attained  that  spirit  is  to  be  a 
Habakkukean ! 


50  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  Ill 

IV 

CONSECRATION   TO   SERVICE 

Almost  all  Paul's  Epistles  divide  into  two  well- 
defined  parts:  the  second  part  in  each  case  being 
introduced  by  a  therefore,  which  marks  a  kind  of 
watershed  of  the  Epistle.  What  goes  before  this 
momentous  therefore  is  devoted  in  the  main  to  an 
illumination  of  the  Divine  plan  and  purpose  —  an 
unfolding  of  the  Grace  of  God  as  the  dynamic  to 
salvation.  What  comes  after  the  watershed 
therefore  is  an  appeal  for  action,  a  call  to  human 
consecration  and  devotion  —  in  a  word  is  the  prac- 
tical application  of  the  message  about  God  and 
his  Grace:  "I  beseech  you  therefore,  brethren, 
by  the  mercies  of  God,  to  present  your  bodies  a 
living  sacrifice,  holy,  acceptable  to  God,  as  an  in- 
telligent service.  And  be  not  fashioned  accord- 
ing to  this  world,  but  be  transformed  by  the  re- 
newing of  your  mind,  that  ye  may  prove  what  is 
the  good  and  acceptable  and  perfect  will  of  God  " 
(Rom.  XII.  1-2). 

The  self-revealing  nature  of  God,  his  self- 
sacrificing,  self-giving  love  is  the  moral  dynamic 
of  the  gospel,  the  virtue-making  power;  but  noth- 
ing defeats  religion  more  effectively  than  to  turn 


Ch.  HI]  DEDICATION  51 

this  living  fact  into  doctrine  and  dogma  as  though 
it  were  the  sum  and  the  end  of  religion.  The 
great  teachers  of  the  New  Testament  always 
put  the  final  emphasis  on  deed,  on  action,  on 
life,  on  character.  "  He  that  heareth  these  say- 
ings of  mine  and  doeth  them  "  is  the  rock-man. 
"  Not  every  one  that  sayeth,  Lord,  Lord,  shall 
enter  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  but  he  that  doeth 
the  will  of  my  Father."  In  fact  the  very  condi- 
tion of  the  revelation  of  truth  is  obedient  action: 
"  He  that  doeth  the  will  shall  know  of  the  doc- 
trine." This  same  pragmatic  method  runs 
through  all  the  Epistles.  The  Apostle  James, 
who  seems  sometimes  rather  pious  and  legal  than 
profoundly  religious,  has  nevertheless  given  us  a 
great  piece  of  psychological  insight,  as  fresh  and 
modern  as  though  it  were  written  by  his  unapos- 
tolic  namesake  Professor  James.  He  says  that 
"  if  any  one  is  a  hearer  of  the  divine  word  and  not 
a  doer  of  it,  he  is  like  a  man  who  sees  his  natural 
face  in  a  mirror,  for  he  looks  at  himself,  and  then 
goes  away  and  quickly  forgets  how  he  looked." 
It  is  a  notorious  fact  that  none  of  us  can  visualize 
our  own  faces  from  memory.  We  see  ourselves 
often  enough,  but  the  image  fades  out  at  once  and 
leaves  us  only  a  vague  blur.  Just  the  same  way 
goodness  which  is   only  thought  about  and  not 


52  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  Ill 

translated  into  motor  effect, —  emotions  over  the 
love  of  God  which  never  drive  us  into  personal 
actions  of  love, —  quickly  fade  away  and  leave  us 
as  though  they  had  not  been,  or  rather  leave  us 
weaker  and  worse  for  the  fruitless  evaporation. 
Paul's  Epistles  ring  everywhere  with  trumpet- 
calls  to  action,  and  even  the  casual  reader  must  be 
impressed  with  the  athletic  temper  of  these  great 
spiritual  documents.  One  hears  him  call  to  his 
young  friend,  Timothy,  as  though  from  the  side 
lines,  "  Exercise  thyself  unto  godliness;  fight  the 
good  fight  of  faith  " ;  and  nobody  can  forget  the 
picture  of  the  ideal  Christian  cap-a-pie  with  his 
face  set  for  knightly  action.  "  Stand,  therefore, 
having  girded  your  loins  with  truth,  and  having 
put  on  the  breastplate  of  righteousness,  and  hav- 
ing shod  your  feet  with  the  preparation  of  the 
gospel  of  peace;  withal  taking  the  shield  of  faith; 
and  take  the  helmet  of  salvation  and  the  sword 
of  the  Spirit"  (Eph.  VI.  14-17).  John's  mes- 
sage, throbbing  as  it  is  with  the  memory  of  the 
Word  of  Life,  which  his  hands  have  handled,  and 
glorified  as  it  is  by  its  upward  look  to  God,  who  at 
last  is  known  as  Love,  is  as  practical  and  prag- 
matic as  the  rest,  with  its  reiterated  test  of  religion 
in  practical  love :  "  Hereby  shall  we  know  that 
we  are  born  of  God,  if  we  love"     And  finally  the 


Ch.  HI]  DEDICATION  53 

Apocalypse  closes  the  New  Testament  with  a  re- 
frain on  overcoming,  which  to  this  writer  means 
not  an  easy  flight  from  the  world,  but  the  subordi- 
nation of  the  lower  appetites  and  desires  to  higher 
ends,  and  a  dedication  of  the  will  to  goodness,  out 
of  love  for  him  who  has  loved  us  with  a  redeem- 
ing love.  This  great  prophetic  book  ends  with 
the  followers  of  Christ,  united  in  a  relation  to 
him  (which  in  beautiful  figurative  language  is 
called  a  bridal  relation),  and  joining  with  the  in- 
visible Spirit  in  the  unending  work  of  bringing 
men  to  God — "the  Spirit  and  the  Bride  say 
come!  " 

I  have  in  the  briefest  possible  way  tried  to 
show  that  the  stress  of  the  New  Testament  is  on 
action,  not  on  dogma,  on  the  dedication  of  the 
whole  self  to  goodness,  not  on  beatific  vision. 
The  Gospel  message  culminates  in  its  compelling 
appeal  to  follow  Christ,  in  its  constraint  of  love 
to  live  as  he  lived — "He  loved  me  and  gave 
himself  for  me,  therefore  the  life  I  now  live  in 
the  flesh  I  live  in  the  faith  of  the  Son." 

Consecration  in  some  degree  is  involved  in  any 
sane  or  rational  life.  It  is  only  the  person  who 
can  forget  himself,  and  become  absorbed  in  some 
large  aim  or  end  of  life,  that  can  enter  into  the 
joy  of  living;  and  it  is  only  the  person  who  can 


54  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  Ill 

thus  forget  himself  in  his  work  that  can  do  any- 
thing well.  "  If  I  lose  myself  I  find  myself,"  was 
Galahad's  preparation  for  finding  the  Holy  Grail, 
and  it  is  a  first  law  of  life  for  anybody  who  wishes 
to  make  his  life  count.  It  is  a  great  mistake  to 
suppose  that  "  consecration  "  is  a  word  which  be- 
longs only  in  the  religious  vocabulary.  It  is  the 
secret  of  everybody's  power.  All  work  of  every 
sort  that  has  a  touch  of  genius  in  it  has  come  out 
of  consecration,  and  it  has  come  from  somebody 
that  forgot  himself  in  his  work. 

Seven  times  over,  in  our  Gospel  records,  Christ 
says,  "  He  that  saves  his  life  shall  lose  it,  and  he 
that  loses  his  life  shall  find  it."  It  is  a  law  of  life 
at  least  as  elemental  and  universal  as  "  survival  of 
the  fittest,"  and  there  are  few  tragedies  greater 
than  the  tragedy  we  see  so  often  repeated,  of  per- 
sons who  with  intense  passion  have  pursued  pleas- 
ure, and  have  stormed  the  citadels  of  success,  and 
have  come  to  the  end  of  life  with  their  lean  hands 
empty,  and  their  hearts  burned  out  to  dull  ash, 
with  no  hope  and  no  faith  in  any  larger  good  to 
be,  because  they  have  never  lost  themselves  in  any 
noble  task  or  service  and  so  have  never  found 
themselves !  The  happy  people  in  the  world  are 
not  the  persons  of  large  leisure,  whose  loins  are 
ungirt,  whose  lamps  are  unlit  and  who  have  no 


Ch.  Ill]  DEDICATION  55 

work  to  do  except  occasionally  to  shake  the  bread- 
fruit tree.  The  happy  people  are  toilers,  conse- 
crated to  difficult  tasks,  absorbed  in  doing  things, 
finding  their  lives  by  sinking  them  in  the  world's 
work  and  the  world's  problems. 

I  want  to  keep  continually  in  the  foreground 
the  fact  that  consecration  must  not  be  a  mere  emo- 
tional giving  of  life  to  causes.  The  things  that 
matter  most  are  ( i )  What  you  put  your  life  into, 
and  (2)  What  kind  of  a  life  you  put  in.  The 
reason  that  it  matters  so  much  what  you  put  your 
life  into  is  that  some  things  are  so  much  more 
worth  doing  than  other  things  are,  that  is,  they 
forward  the  welfare  of  the  race  better  than  other 
things  do.  The  man  who  can  teach  men  has  no 
right  to  raise  turnips.  Then,  too,  we  all  have 
special  gifts  and  aptitudes  which  peculiarly  fit  us 
for  some  tasks  rather  than  for  other  tasks.  The 
very  possession  of  a  marked  aptitude  or  gift  is  in 
itself  a  divine  call,  and  carries  with  it  a  summons 
to  service  —  a  noblesse  oblige. 

But  it  is  of  vastly  more  importance  what  kind 
of  life  you  put  in.  Emerson  says  that  the  Gulf- 
stream  will  run  through  a  straw  if  it  is  parallel  to 
the  current, —  and  so  it  will, —  that  is,  a  little  of 
it  will,  but  a  great  deal  more  of  it  will  run  through 
a  ten-foot  pipe.     A  life  of  a  single  candle-power 


56  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  Ill 

and  of  a  single  horse-power  will  do  something  if 
it  is  consecrated  to  a  definite  mission,  but  the  hun- 
dred-power life  is  much  more  economic!  It  uses 
no  more  raw  material,  while  its  impact  on  the  race, 
its  circle  of  dynamic  influence,  is  vastly  greater, 
and  it  gathers  power  as  it  goes,  like  a  falling  stone. 
The  first  concern,  then,  of  any  one  who  is  eager 
to  live  a  consecrated  life  should  be  to  become  as 
much  of  a  person  as  may  be.  Culture  and  conse- 
cration ought  never  to  be  separated.  They  are 
when  cut  apart  like  the  two  blades  of  the  scissors 
with  the  rivet  gone.  Culture  alone  is  cold  and 
thin.  Consecration  alone  is  weak  and  empty. 
"  For  their  sakes  I  sanctify  myself,"  was  the  great 
word  of  the  Master:  "  for  their  sakes  I  put  myself 
at  my  best "  ought  to  be  the  aim  of  us  all.  The 
doctor  who  has  a  passion  for  saving  life  fulfills  his 
mission  best,  not  by  hurrying  into  it  unequipped 
and  untrained,  but  by  taking  years  of  his  precious 
life  in  learning  how  to  do  it.  The  life-saver  is 
consecrated  to  no  purpose  if  he  cannot  row  in  the 
storm  and  swim  in  the  breaking  sea.  The  mother 
may  be  ever  so  consecrated  to  the  interests  of  her 
child,  but  she  must  as  well  know  how  little  lives  are 
rightly  developed,  and  she  must  know  the  relative 
value  of  spanking  and  sugar-plums.  The  social 
worker  may  be  as  consecrated  as  St.  Francis,  and 


Ch.  Ill]  DEDICATION  57 

yet  may  waste  his  life  if  he  is  unsound  in  sociology 
and  awry  in  economic  theory.  Self-enlargement 
and  self-giving  are  the  two  indissoluble  traits  of 
a  good  life. 

It  perhaps  needs  hardly  to  be  said  (it  is  so  evi- 
dent) that  true  consecration  can  never  be  reached 
by  artificial  methods,  or  by  sheer  effort.  The  life 
must  be  kindled  by  an  inward  passion  for  an  end 
that  is  large  enough  and  high  enough  to  feed  the 
life  and  draw  it  on.  The  moment  we  discover 
that  a  person  is  "  doing  good  "  for  selfish  ends  and 
with  a  view  to  utilitarian  results,  we  despise  his 
good  deeds  and  will  have  none  of  them,  for,  in  the 
last  analysis,  it  is  the  life  that  we  appreciate,  and 
not  the  "  things."  In  fact  the  highest  consecra- 
tion is,  like  genius,  unconscious  of  itself.  The 
person  who  is  gloriously  consecrated  is  so  com- 
pletely absorbed  in  the  task  he  has  to  do,  so  inter- 
ested working  out  the  end  of  goodness  which  he 
has  in  view,  that  he  is  hardly  aware  that  he  is  sac- 
rificing his  life  to  it.  Grace  Darling  could  never 
understand  why  her  heroic  act  stirred  England  so 
powerfully:  in  artless  simplicity  she  used  to  say, 
"  I  did  what  everybody  else  would  have  done." 
There  is  a  fine  naivete  in  words  which  Christ  puts 
in  the  mouths  of  the  blessed  ones  on  his  right  hand : 
"  When  did  we  do  all  these  things  for  which  we 


58  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  Ill 

are  commended?"  What  a  great  word  that  is 
which  the  writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  uses 
to  utter  the  very  essence  of  Christ's  sublime  sacri- 
fice: "  Who  for  the  joy  that  was  set  before  him 
endured  the  Cross!  " 

V3 

POURED   OUT 

In  the  annals  of  David's  life  there  is  a  very  fine 
story  of  heroic  daring,  and  of  the  way  David  by 
a  sudden  inspiration  turned  the  splendid  bravery 
of  his  men  into  a  religious  sacrament.  In  the 
midst  of  hard  battle,  David  expressed  a  longing 
for  a  drink  of  water  out  of  the  well  at  the  gate  of 
Bethlehem,  at  a  time  when  Bethlehem  was  held 
by  the  army  of  the  Philistines.  Three  of  the 
most  valiant  of  David's  "  mighty  men  "  at  once 
volunteered  to  break  through  the  enemies'  line  and 
get  the  water  for  their  king.  At  the  risk  of  their 
lives  they  got  through  to  the  well  and  brought  the 
skin  of  hard-won  water  back  to  David.  If  he 
had  done  the  usual  thing  and  had  drunk  the  water 
which  his  brave  men  had  got  for  him,  we  should 
never  have  heard  the  story,  but  he  did  not  drink 
it.  It  seemed  to  him  too  precious,  too  deeply 
tinged  with  the  blood-red  spirit  of  risk  and  sacri- 


Ch.  Ill]  DEDICATION  59 

fice,  to  be  put  to  common,  ordinary  uses,  and,  up- 
lifted by  the  beauty  of  the  deed,  David  poured  the 
water  out  unto  the  Lord. 

What  a  waste !     What  a  way  to  treat  his  brave 
men!    is    the    comment    of    dull    common-sense. 
What  a  pity  for  the  dry  sand  to  drink  up  the  water 
that  had  been  got  at  such  a  venture !  is  the  philis- 
tine  view  of  the  matter.     But  to  those  who  have 
eyes  for  the  inner  meaning  of  deeds,  this  act  of 
David's  brings  to  light  the  fascinating,  attractive 
quality  of  character  which  has  made  the  first  king 
of  Judah  with  all  his  faults  an  immortal  figure. 
He  does  the  sublime  and  unexpected  thing.     He 
will  not  turn  to  personal,   selfish  uses  the  gift 
which  comes  to  him  deeply  colored  with  the  sac- 
rificial daring  of  his  men.     The  wine-skin  holds 
for  him  not  water  to  be  drunk,  but  the  precious 
life-blood  of  brave  men  to  be  offered  to  the  Lord 
as  a  sacrament  of  love.     There  is  a  parallel  story 
in  the  New  Testament  that  is  still  finer  and  more 
moving.     A  woman  who  has  suddenly  found  a 
new  life,  a  new  hope,  a  new  power  through  the  un- 
expected gentleness  and  tenderness  of  Christ  and 
through  his  extraordinary  faith  in  her  comes  in  at 
a  dinner  where  he  is  and,  in  a  moment  of  over- 
mastering love  and  gratitude  at  the  memory  of 
the  past,  she  breaks  a  costly  alabaster  vase  of 


60  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  Ill 

priceless  perfume  and  pours  it  recklessly  out  upon 
the  Saviour's  feet.  The  common-sense  observers 
cry  out  against  the  waste,  and  the  economically 
minded  figure  out  how  much  could  have  been  pur- 
chased with  this  spilled  ointment,  but  Christ  sees 
further.  He  instantly  catches  the  deeper  mean- 
ing. For  him,  it  is  the  revelation  of  a  spirit,  a 
devotion,  a  passion  that  loves  and  that  cannot  stop 
to  figure  and  calculate.  He  sees  that  there  is  at 
least  one  person  in  the  world  who  understands 
him,  who  has  discovered  his  way,  and  who  feels 
the  absolute  worth  of  love.  She  has  not  sold  her 
perfume  to  inaugurate  some  paltry  charity  that 
would  bring  her  cheap  fame;  she  has  instead,  with- 
out any  calculation,  made  an  undying  sacrament 
of  it. 

The  world  is  full  of  chances  for  this  kind  of 
sacramental  service.  There  is  hardly  anything 
which  touches  our  higher  life  that  is  not  blood-red 
with  the  sacrifices  that  won  it  for  us.  The  privi- 
leges that  have  become  our  common  heritage  have 
all  cost  an  untold  amount  of  venture  and  daring 
and  suffering  and  death.  We  too  often  take 
these  things  as  a  matter  of  course.  We  use  them 
as  we  do  the  air  and  sunlight  as  though  they  were 
ours  by  right  of  birth  and  we  do  not  have  the  high 
quality  of  poetry  and  religion  in  our  nature  that 


Ch.  Ill]  DEDICATION  61 

makes  us  able  to  raise  them  to  a  sacramental  ser- 
vice as  we  should. 

The  Cross  itself  has  again  and  again  been 
thought  of  and  used  as  a  symbol  of  security:  "  He 
paid  the  price";  "He  died  that  we  might  be 
safe."  It  is  seized  upon  as  a  way  of  relief. 
Everything  has  been  done  for  us  without  us. 
Our  title  is  now  clear  to  mansions  in  the  skies. 
Surely  not  thus  should  we  accept  the  sacrifice.  If 
it  is  what  the  most  devout  souls  have  believed  it  to 
be,  then  all  life  henceforth  must  be  colored  and 
altered  by  this  unparalleled  act  of  love  and  sacri- 
fice. Instead  of  bringing  us  the  seal  of  perpetual 
security,  instead  of  being  meant  for  our  own  selfish 
relief,  it  is  a  call  to  us  to  pour  out  the  life  that  has 
been  given  to  us  in  the  highest  way  of  sacramental 
service  to  which  we  can  raise  our  vision.  If  re- 
demption has  come  to  us  in  this  way  of  uncalculat- 
ing  love,  then  we  can  never  live  again  in  the  poor, 
thin,  common,  plodding  way  of  old;  the  love  of 
Christ  "  constrains  us  "  to  live  the  bold  and  dar- 
ing way  of  faith  and  love  that  ventures  all  and 
keeps  back  nothing. 

The  tremendous  cost  of  freedom  and  of  self- 
government  makes  the  word  "  country "  mean 
something  new  when  we  see  it  colored  with  un- 
stinted   sacrifice.     But    here     again    we    cannot 


62  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  Ill 

calmly  drink  the  precious  water  to  quench  our  own 
private  thirst.  We  cannot  settle  down  in  security 
and  enjoy  in  peace  the  treasures  which  others  have 
won  for  us.  Noblesse  oblige.  We  are  bound  as 
patriotic  sons  of  noble  fathers  to  make  their  sac- 
rificial gains  genuine  sacraments  of  life.  We  can 
do  this  best  by  risking  all  that  freedom  means  to 
us,  all  that  country  stands  for  in  our  vision,  in  a 
brave  effort  to  bring  forth  and  secure  for  our 
children  a  still  greater  freedom  and  a  still  loftier 
country.  Patriotic  service  is  made  the  truest  sac- 
rament when  it  is  devoted  to  the  task  of  raising 
patriotism  itself  to  its  higher  meaning.  "  The 
greatest  legacy  the  hero  leaves  his  race  is  —  to 
have  been  a  hero." 

Our  own  religion,  born  in  heroic  endeavor  and 
baptized  in  unstinted  suffering,  bravely  borne,  has 
not  seldom  been  quietly  accepted  as  a  way  of  ease 
and  security.  The  water  brought  at  such  risk  has 
been  drunk  in  shelter  and  in  peace.  We  have 
often  felt  that  we  were  doing  enough  if  we  en- 
joyed our  privileges  and  passed  them  on,  but 
slightly  shrunken,  to  the  next  generation.  Our 
ideal  has  been  "  preservation."  We  have  aimed 
to  guard  and  keep,  to  have  and  to  hold. 

It  will  not  do.  It  is  a  miserable  ambition.  It 
is  time  for  us  to  discover  the  sacramental  way  of 


Ch.  Ill]  DEDICATION  63 

treating  this  precious  water  which  our  ancestors 
drew  for  us.  We  cannot  use  it  for  our  private 
enjoyment,  we  cannot  save  it  for  our  children,  we 
cannot  treat  it  as  ours,  we  must  pour  it  out  in  un- 
calculating,  self-forgetful  devotion.  It  is  better 
that  we  should  lose  it  than  that  we  should  merely 
succeed  in  saving  it  for  our  own  ends.  It  is  too 
sacred,  too  red  with  the  life-blood  of  heroes,  to  be 
used  in  the  dull,  common  way  of  commonplace 
men.  It  must  be  poured  out  like  the  Bethlehem 
water,  like  the  Bethany  perfume,  like  the  life  of 
Christ,  poured  out  without  counting  the  cost  or 
calculating  the  results,  and  made  a  real  sacrament 
of  life,  a  spontaneous  bestowal  of  love  for  love's 
sake. 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  THINGS  BY  WHICH  WE  LIVE 

I 

THE    PLUMB-LINE 

One  of  the  most  vivid  pictures  in  the  Old 
Testament  is  that  which  the  prophet  Amos  gives 
us  of  the  Lord  standing  in  the  midst  of  Israel  and 
holding  a  plumb-line  in  his  hand. 

The  popular  idea  of  a  prophet  conceives  him 
to  be  a  strange-looking  man,  wild-eyed,  highly 
wrought,  given  to  fanciful  visions  and,  in  the  main, 
a  mysterious  fore-teller  of  remote  events.  In  real 
fact  he  was  strikingly  unlike  that  crude  sketch. 
The  distinctive  prophet  was  a  person  of  rare  san- 
ity and  balance,  a  man  who  could  look  straight  at 
facts  and  with  clairvoyant  insight  could  see 
through  them  and  discover  what  they  involved. 
He  could  tell  from  the  lines  and  curves  of  move- 
ments and  events  and  motives  how  they  would 
necessarily  fulfill  themselves  as  they  unfolded  with 

the  process  of  time.     In  the  proper  sense  of  the 

64 


Ch.  IV]     THINGS  BY  WHICH  WE  LIVE       65 

word,  he  was  not  primarily  a  fore-teller,  he  was  a 
revealer  of  the  deeper  meaning  of  present  existing 
conditions.  He  possessed  an  unerring  sense  of 
the  direction  in  which  deeds  were  carrying  on  the 
doer  of  them,  as  unerring  as  the  artist's  sense  of 
harmony  or  of  beauty.  It  was  this  power  of 
moral  insight  that  made  the  prophets  the  states- 
men of  their  epochs.  They  saw  and  proclaimed 
the  trend  and  drift  of  policies.  They  looked  on 
through  and  announced  in  advance  where  a  given 
course  would  finally  terminate.  They  were  in- 
tense patriots,  but  their  supreme  loyalty  and  devo- 
tion was  to  the  ideal  country,  the  country  as  it 
ought  to  be,  and  they  judged  all  policies  and  ex- 
pedients in  the  light  of  their  clear  insight. 

Amos,  a  keeper  of  sheep  and  a  dresser  of  vine- 
yards, in  the  country  about  Tekoa,  was  the  first  of 
the  literary  prophets  and  one  of  the  profoundest 
moral  revealers  of  any  age.  He  was  not  afraid 
of  "  the  face  of  clay."  He  dared  to  say  before 
any  man,  or  any  group  of  men,  what  he  actually 
thought.  He  understood  the  movements  going  on 
around  him  as  clearly  as  he  understood  the  habits 
of  his  sheep. 

"  He  read  each  wound,  each  weakness  clear, 

He  struck  his  finger  on  the  place; 

And  said :     '  Thou  ailest  here,  and  here.' ' 


66  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  IV 

But  the  great  thing  after  all  which  he  announces 
in  his  plumb-line  figure  is  the  fact  of  an  un- 
escapable,  inexorable,  pervasive  law  of  moral 
gravitation  in  the  universe.  There  is  no  caprice 
about  moral  results.  You  cannot  hoodwink  the 
forces  which  fulfill  events.  As  fire  burns  your 
hand,  if  you  play  with  it  carelessly,  as  gravity  will 
tumble  you  over  the  precipice,  if  you  step  falsely 
on  the  narrow  ledge,  so,  too,  the  swing  of  inevit- 
able moral  consequences  will  follow  as  a  doom  the 
deeds  of  men  and  of  nations.  "  By  no  clever 
trickery,"  wrote  one  of  our  sound  present-day 
teachers,  "  can  profligacy  or  low  living  come  into 
possession  of  the  beatitudes."  There  hangs  the 
plumb-line,  dropped  as  from  the  hand  of  God  and 
by  it  every  deed  is  tested.  There  is  no  favoritism, 
no  wheedling,  no  capricious  exception.  If  the  life 
is  unplumb,  if  the  deeds  and  policies  of  it  swing 
away  from  a  line  of  rectitude,  nothing  can  save 
the  structure  from  collapse  —  nothing  but  a  re- 
building of  it  in  conformity  with  the  moral  laws 
of  gravitation. 

This  deeper  prophecy  which  lays  bare  the 
eternal  nature  of  things  and  which  announces  days 
of  judgment  as  always  coming  is  a  characteristic 
not  only  of  Amos  and  the  other  rugged  prophets 
of  Israel  and  Judah,  but  it  is  as  well  an  inherent 


Ch.  IV]     THINGS  BY  WHICH  WE  LIVE       67 

feature  of  the  work  of  all  the  greatest  interpreters 
of  life.  Euripides  saw  the  plumb-line  as  clearly 
as  Amos  did.  He  will  not  believe  in  the  popular, 
capricious,  immoral  gods  — "  gods  who  do  aught 
base  are  not  gods  at  all."  But  he  does  believe, 
with  all  the  virility  of  his  great  soul,  in  the  moral 
purpose  of  that  eternal  nature  of  things, 

"  Whom  veils  enfold 

Of  light,  of  dark  night  flecked  with  gleams  of  gold, 

Of  star-hosts  dancing  round  thee  without  end." 

He  —  that  unerring  moral  will  —  guides  all 
things  in  accordance  with  truth  and  goodness. 

Socrates  is  another  prophet  who  knew,  with 
clear  insight,  that  the  foundations  of  the  universe 
rest  upon  immovable  pillars  of  righteousness.  A 
man  can  always  swing  boldly  out  and  trust  the 
moral  nature  of  the  universe.  The  only  evil  thing 
in  the  world,  he  thinks,  is  to  do  evil.  To  suffer 
injustice  for  a  brief  span  is  no  great  hardship,  but 
to*be  attached  by  act  of  will  to  a  course  of  injustice 
is  the  one  thing  that  can  have  no  happy  outcome  — 
"  I  know,"  he  declares,  and  in  most  particulars  he 
professed  to  know  very  little,  "  I  know  that  injus- 
tice and  disobedience  to  a  better  is  always  evil  and 
dishonorable."  "  Think  not  of  life  and  children 
first  and  of  justice  afterwards,  but  of  justice  first. 


68  THE  WORLD  WITHIN         [Ch.  IV 

If  you  go  about  returning  evil  for  evil,  and  injury 
for  injury,  breaking  covenants  and  agreements, 
wronging  those  whom  you  ought  not  to  wrong,  the 
laws  of  the  invisible  world  will  treat  you  as  an 
enemy.' ' 

The  greatest  of  the  poets  bear  witness  to  this 
fact  of  the  plumb-line.  Dante  is  not  mainly  con- 
cerned with  a  supernal  world  beyond  the  stars  or 
with  a  dire  region  of  doom  under  the  earth.  He 
is  merely  telling  us  of  the  inevitable  recoil  of  deeds 
and  choices.  Every  man  is  building  the  house 
which  he  is  going  to  inhabit,  and  is  now  creating 
the  climate  and  atmosphere  that  will  inevitably 
bring  him  an  environment  of  joy  or  woe. 

Nobody  can  ever  forget  the  scene  in  Hamlet, 
where  Shakespeare  gives  us,  as  he  so  often  does  in 
this  and  other  plays,  his  announcement  of  this  law 
of  the  plumb-line.  The  wicked  king  is  trying  to 
pray  —  but  he  cannot  find  any  form  of  prayer 
that  can  be  efficacious  until  he  changes  his  moral 
attitude  and  gets  a  new  purpose  of  heart. 

"  What  form  of  prayer 
Can  serve  my  turn?     Forgive  me  my  foul  murder? 
That  cannot  be;  since  I  am  still  possessed 
Of  those  effects  for  which  I  did  the  murder, 
My  crown,  mine  own  ambition  and  my  queen. 
May  one  be  pardoned,  and  retain  th1  offense? 


Ch.  IV]     THINGS  BY  WHICH  WE  LIVE       69 

In  the  corrupted  currents  of  this  world 
Offense's  gilded  hand  may  shove  by  justice; 
And  oft  'tis  seen  the  wicked  prize  itself 
Buys  out  the  law:  but  'tis  not  so  above; 
There  is  no  shuffling, —  there  the  action  lies 
In  its  true  nature."  , 

Among  our  more  modern  prophets,  Emerson 
has  given  as  robust  expression  to  the  law  of  moral 
gravitation  as  any  have  given,  especially  in  his 
great  Essay  on  "  Compensation."  His  finest 
short  statement  of  the  truth  is,  however,  to  be 
found  in  his  Address  on  Abraham  Lincoln,  in 
wrhich  he  says: 

"  There  is  a  serene  Providence  which  rules  the  fate  of 
nations,  which  makes  little  account  of  time,  little  of  one 
generation  Or  race,  makes  no  account  of  disasters,  con- 
quers alike  by  what  is  called  defeat  or  by  what  is  called 
victory,  thrusts  aside  enemy  and  obstruction,  crushes 
everything  immoral  as  inhuman,  and  obtains  the  ultimate 
triumph  of  the  best  race  by  the  sacrifice  of  everything 
that  resists  the  moral  laws  of  the  world." 

The  question  remains  to  be  asked,  whether  this 
is  merely  a  theory  of  certain  idealists  and  dream- 
ers, whom  we  name  "  prophets,"  or  whether  it  is 
indeed  so;  i.  e.,  a  real  truth  of  the  eternal  nature 
of  things.  Nobody  ever  can  "  prove ''  such  a 
mighty  assertion  about  our  universe.     It  is  impos- 


70  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  IV 

sible  to  demonstrate  that  every  deed  carries  its 
inevitable  nemesis  in  itself  and  that  moral  conse- 
quences are  as  unvarying  as  the  law  of  gravitation 
or  the  swing  of  planetary  orbits.  But  everything 
we  know  about  habit  and  character  tends  to  verify 
this  law  of  the  prophets.  The  man  himself,  as 
William  James  says,  may  not  "  count  "  his  wrong 
deed,  "  and  a  kind  heaven  may  not  count  it;  but  it 
is  being  counted  none  the  less.  Down  among  his 
nerve-cells  and  fibers  the  molecules  are  counting  it, 
registering  it  and  storing  it  up  to  be  used  against 
him  when  the  next  temptation  comes."  Apparent 
"  success  "  and  a  seeming  "  efficiency  "  that  brings 
coveted  "  results "  are  poor  substitutes  for  a 
rightly  fashioned  life.  The  world  with  its  crasser 
judgments  may  approve  the  men  who  seem  to  hit 
the  desired  goals,  but  the  triumph  is  dearly  bought 
if  it  has  been  won  by  the  sacrifice  of  the  growth  of 
the  soul  itself. 

Whether  the  moral  law  is  cosmic,  i.  e.,  whether 
the  entire  universe  in  all  its  processes  is  working 
out  a  moral  purpose,  and  every  least  movement  of 
evolving  matter  is  cooperant  to  a  moral  end,  is 
too  large  a  question  for  us  to  answer.  There  are 
certainly  many  facts  which  challenge  such  a  faith. 
But  it  is  hard  to  see  how  anything  can  be  moving 
to  no  purpose,  how  any  cosmos  can  come  by  acci- 


Ch.  IV]     THINGS  BY  WHICH  WE  LIVE       71 

dent;  how,  again,  some  things  can  be  steered  to 
intelligent  purpose  and  others  be  only  random  hap- 
penings. It  is  certain  that  some  regions  of  the 
universe  reveal  a  moral  law  of  gravitation,  that 
in  some  areas  the  eternal  plumb-line  is  set  up  and 
operates  inevitably.  It  may  be  that  it  does  every- 
where. It  is  the  safest  guess.  In  his  famous 
Romanes  Lecture  of  1893 — "Evolution  and 
Ethics  " —  Huxley  comes  face  to  face  with  the 
immense  ground  swell  of  ethical  purpose  and 
moral  process  in  the  world  and  he  tries  to  discover 
its  source  and  origin.  He  thinks  that  it  cannot  be 
cosmic;  it  cannot  belong  to  the  nature  of  things. 
It  must  have  come  in  afterwards ;  it  must  be  super- 
posed upon  a  non-moral  "  nature."  But  this  con- 
clusion of  the  perplexed  naturalist  will  hardly  do. 
The  cosmic  records  need  to  be  more  closely  and 
carefully  searched  again.  It  may  be  after  all  that 
the  prophets  are  right,  and  that  the  plumb-line 
which  Amos  saw  is  fixed  in  the  very  cosmic  nature 
of  things. 

II 

THE    FACT   OF   MUST 

Must  is  one  of  the  easiest  verbs  in  the  English 
language  to  conjugate.     It  is  gloriously  defective, 


72  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  IV 

with  its  one  mood  and  one  tense.  But  if  ever  a 
word  weighed  a  ton  it  is  this  same  little  defective 
verb.  We  meet  it  at  all  ages  and  on  all  levels  of 
life,  and  it  holds  us  like  a  tested  line  of  trench. 
We  very  early  discover  that  all  mathematical 
facts  not  only  are  what  they  are  but  that  they 
must  be  so.  When  we  have  once  learned  the  mul- 
tiplication table,  we  come  to  realize  that  it  is  good 
not  only  for  the  local  latitude  and  longitude  where 
we  happen  to  live,  but  it  holds  for  all  lands  and  for 
all  possible  worlds.  When  we  once  find  that  the 
shortest  distance  between  two  points  is  a  straight 
line  we  instantly  see  that  it  must  be  so  everywhere 
and  that  if  angels  wish  to  take  the  shortest  way 
home,  they  must  fly  in  straight  lines.  When  we 
prove  that  the  sum  of  the  angles  in  a  triangle  is 
equal  to  two  right  angles,  we  see  that  it  must 
always  and  everywhere  be  so  —  even  in  a  triangle 
with  its  apex  at  Arcturus  and  its  base  across  the 
earth's  orbit  around  the  sun.  All  our  sciences 
write  must  into  all  their  laws,  for  a  law  is  not  a 
law  until  it  carries  must  into  all  the  facts  with 
which  it  deals.  And  yet  no  person  ever  sees  this 
fact  of  "  must  be  so  "  with  his  eyes  nor  can  he  find 
it  with  any  one  of  his  senses.  The  only  thing  we 
can  find  with  our  senses  is  what  actually  happens, 
what  is  there  now.     We  can  never  perceive  what 


Ch.  IV]     THINGS  BY  WHICH  WE  LIVE       73 

must  happen.     Senses  can  deal  only  with  facts, 
only  with  is,  not  with  must  be.     Must  belongs  in 
a  deeper,  invisible  world  where  mind  works  and 
not  eyes.     For  ages  men  wondered  what  held  the 
earth  up  in  space.     They  always  looked  for  some 
visible  support.     It  was  a  giant  like  Atlas  who 
held  it  on  his  back,  or  it  was  a  huge  tortoise,  or  it 
was  an  elephant  standing  on  another  elephant,  with 
elephants  all  the  way  down!     But  it  turns  out 
that  nothing  visible  or  tangible  is  there.     The  dis- 
coverers of  the  North  and  South  poles  found  no 
real  "  poles  "  that  ran  into  grooves  on  which  the 
earth  spun   round.     There  was  nothing  to   see. 
The  cable  which  holds  the   earth  in   space  and 
swings  it  on  its  mighty  annual  curve  is  invisible 
to  all  eyes  and  yet  it  holds  irresistibly,  for  the  must 
of  a  universal  law  is  woven  into  it,  and  the  mind 
can  find  it  though  the  eyes  cannot. 

There  is  another,  and  a  higher,  kind  of  must 
which  holds  men  as  that  force  of  gravitation  holds 
worlds.  It  was  one  of  the  most  august  events  of 
modern  history  when  a  man  in  the  light  of  his  own 
conscience  challenged  the  councils  and  traditions 
of  the  Church,  refused  to  alter  the  truth  which  his 
soul  saw,  and  boldly  declared,  "  Here  I  stand,  I 
cannot  do  otherwise."  This  is  a  strange  thing, 
this  inner  "  must,"  this  adamantine  "  I  cannot  do 


74  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  IV 

otherwise."  It  reveals  a  new  kind  of  gravitation 
toward  a  new  kind  of  center,  and  it  implies  the 
existence  of  another  sort  of  invisible  universe  in 
which  we  live.  It  often  carries  a  person  straight 
against  his  wishes,  into  hard  conflict  with  his  incli- 
nations, and  it  may  take  him  up  to  that  perilous 
edge  where  life  itself  is  put  at  hazard. 

"  Though  love  repine  and  reason  chafe, 

I  heard  a  voice  without  reply; 
'Tis  man's  perdition  to  be  safe 

When  for  the  truth  he  ought  to  die." 

Some  persons  do  not  feel  this  irresistible  pull  as 
powerfully  as  others  do,  but  probably  nobody,  who 
can  be  called  a  person,  altogether  escapes  it.  A 
little  boy,  in  the  first  stages  of  collision  between 
instinct  and  duty,  said  naively  to  his  mother: 
"  I've  got  something  inside  me  I  can't  do  what  I 
want  to  with!  "  This  is  exactly  the  truth  about 
it.  It  holds,  it  says  must,  like  the  other  invisible 
realities  that  build  the  universe. 

Different  individuals  feel  this  inner  pull  in  dif- 
ferent ways.  They  read  off  their  call  to  duty  in 
different  terms.  Their  must  confronts  them  in 
unique  fashion,  but  whenever  it  comes  and  how- 
ever it  comes,  it  is  august  and  moving.  We  no 
doubt  mix  some  of  our  cruder  self  in  it  and  perhaps 


Ch.  IV]     THINGS  BY  WHICH  WE  LIVE       75 

we  color  it  with  the  hue  of  our  human  habits,  but 
at  its  truest  and  its  best,  it  is  the  most  glorious 
thing  in  our  structure  and  it  closely  allies  us  to  a 
Higher  than  ourselves. 

"  So  nigh  is  grandeur  to  our  dust, 

So  near  is  God  to  man, 
When  duty  whispers  low,  '  Thou  must,' 

The  youth  replies,  '  I  can.'  " 

III 
WHERE    ARGUMENTS    FAIL 

There  are  some  matters,  and  they  are  just  the 
most  vital  ones,  which  lie  too  deeply  embedded  in 
the  sub-soil  of  life  itself  to  be  settled  by  debate. 
Coleridge  was  in  the  main  right  when  he  made  the 
distinction,  so  famous  in  his  religious  prose  writ- 
ings, between  reason  and  understanding,  or,  as  it 
might  be  put,  between  reason  and  reasoning,  i.  e., 
logical  argument.  A  position  may  be  grounded 
and  established  in  reason  and  yet  at  the  same  time 
lie  beyond  the  sphere  of  argumentative  debate. 
The  range  of  logical  proof  is  notoriously  limited. 
One  explanation  of  this  situation  is  that  "  think- 
ing," "  reasoning,"  "  speculation  "  is  a  late-born 
faculty  and  capacity.  There  was  a  time  when 
there  was  no  need  for  it.     Instinct  served  every 


76  THE  WORLD  WITHIN         [Ch.  IV 

purpose.  Life  was  simple  and  of  all  things  prac- 
tical. Action  was  the  all-important  thing,  and 
primitive  man  was  organized,  in  fact  pre-organ- 
ized,  to  act.  Thinking  was  a  useless  luxury,  as 
unnecessary  for  the  function  of  living  as  a  steamer- 
trunk  would  have  been,  or  a  grand-square  piano. 
When  thinking  by  the  use  of  abstract  concepts  did 
come  into  fashion,  after  life  had  gone  on  a  long 
time  without  such  a  luxury,  it  helped  solve  some 
problems,  but  it  worked  successfully  only  for  prob- 
lems of  a  limited  scope. 

Long  before  thinking  or  speculation  had 
achieved  any  marked  successes,  long  before  man 
had  learned  to  argue  for  the  mere  fun  and  fascina- 
tion of  the  thing,  that  other  strange  trait  of  human 
life  had  flowered  out  —  the  tendency,  I  mean,  to 
feel  the  worth  of  things,  the  power  to  appreciate 
values.  This  is  even  more  distinctive  of  man,  a 
more  fundamental  trait  of  personality,  than  think- 
ing or  reasoning  is.  It  was  born  when  man  was 
born  —  it  is  as  immemorial  as  smiling  or  weep- 
ing. It  is  rooted  and  grounded  in  reason  but  it  is 
not  due  to  reasoning. 

By  the  worth  or  value  of  a  deed,  I  mean  its  sig- 
nificance for  the  realization  of  the  highest  good  of 
life.  It  is  a  sense  of  appreciation  of  what  ought 
to  be  in  order  to  bring  life  on  toward  its  fulfillment. 


Ch.  IV]     THINGS  BY  WHICH  WE  LIVE       77 

In  a  complex  life,  like  ours,  a  person  will  obviously 
have  many  ends  to  live  for  and  many  scales  of 
value,  but  gradually  lesser  and  lower  ones  will  fall 
into  place  under  wider  and  higher  ones  and  thus 
we  form  a  kind  of  hierarchical  scale  of  values, 
with  some  over-topping  end  of  supreme  worth 
dominating  our  life  and  creating  our  loyalties. 
We  discover  for  instance  that  life  is  more  than 
meat  or  body  than  raiment,  that  mere  survival 
yields  to  struggle  for  the  life  of  others,  and  that 
sometimes  life  must  be  given  for  something  worth 
more  than  life. 

But,  as  I  have  said,  this  sense  of  worth  is  not  a 
product  of  reasoning.  It  attaches  rather  to  the 
great  instinctive  and  emotional  springs  which 
gradually  become  organized  through  experience, 
life  and  action.  It  works  as  a  deep-lying  inner 
ground-swell,  pushing  in  a  definite  forward  direc- 
tion, rather  than  as  a  logically  conceived  plan 
which  can  be  settled  and  verified  by  argument. 
"  I  see  my  way  as  birds  their  trackless  way." 
The  first  and  most  fundamental  law  of  con- 
sciousness in  its  primitive  stage,  whether  in  that 
of  the  child  or  the  race,  is  the  inveterate  tendency 
to  organize  activity.  This  principle  operates  be- 
fore the  child  begins  to  think  or  to  aim  at  con- 
ceived ends.     At  the  very  first,  instincts  are  defi- 


78  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  IV 

nite,  simple  ways  of  acting  for  definite  simple  ends. 
Then  unconsciously,  but  with  momentous  results, 
the  child  begins  to  group  impulses  and  instincts 
into  systems  of  interest,  little  empires  which  now 
direct  action.  Simple  functions  converge  into 
organizations  or  systems  of  instinct  and  emotion, 
or  purposeful  efforts.  Little  by  little  these  pri- 
mary systems  of  action  widen  out,  expand,  enrich, 
and  become  informed  by  experience  and  ever  after 
lie  deep  down  at  the  roots  or  springs  of  will  and  of 
personality.  From  first  to  last  our  life  values,  our 
sense  of  worth,  are  formed  and  shaped  in  this 
deeper  region  below  the  level  of  conscious  reflec- 
tions and  reasoning.  They  are  always  operating, 
they  are  always  playing  the  main  part  or  role  in 
the  active  drama  of  our  life,  but  they  seldom 
appear  as  actors.  The  sentiments,  again,  are  only 
wider  systems  or  groups  of  these  springs  of  in- 
stinct and  emotion,  more  or  less  profoundly  ration- 
alized through  experience,  the  experience  of  the 
individual  and  the  race.  They  are  among  the 
most  positive  forces  within  us  which  move  to 
action,  but  they  lie  too  deeply  embedded  in  the 
fundaments  of  our  being  to  be  easily  recast.  Per- 
sons of  a  certain  type  often  sneer  at  "  sentiment," 
and  at  what  they  call  "  sentimental  "  attitudes. 
They  probably  refer  to  excessive  emotional  tones 


Ch.  IV]     THINGS  BY  WHICH  WE  LIVE       79 

and  seeming  lack  of  rational  basis.  It  is  true  no 
doubt  that  sentiment  is  sometimes  thin  and  "  gush- 
ing." But  the  great  sentiments  which  more  or 
less  rule  our  lives  are  immense  realities  to  be  reck- 
oned with.  They  are  the  widest  and  most  inclu- 
sive organized  systems  of  action  operative  in  our 
lives.  They  furnish  us  with  our  supreme  values. 
They  move,  like  great  subterranean  ocean  currents, 
through  all  the  activities  of  our  being.  In  them 
all  our  loyalties  are  born  and  by  them  are  en- 
larged and  enriched.  Love,  patriotism,  devotion 
to  truth,  aesthetic  appreciation,  passion  for  good- 
ness, religion  in  all  its  range  and  heights,  are  such 
sentiments.  They  represent  the  organization  of 
many  instincts,  emotions  and  attitudes,  unified, 
fused  together  and  sublimated  by  reason.  They 
give  meaning  and  value  to  things  we  care  for. 
They  determine  our  pursuits.  They  kindle  our 
loyalty.  They  gird  us  and  carry  us  forward  to 
our  various  goals.  Arguments  change  our  intel- 
lectual conclusions  and  affect  our  decisions  in  many 
spheres,  but  they  do  not  often  reach  this  more  cen- 
tral region  where  we  live  and  have  our  being. 
The  great  loyalties  are  only  slightly  touched  by 
logic.  They  lie  deeper  down  in  the  slowly  formed 
systems  of  instinct,  emotion  and  will,  where  our 
estimates  of  values  are  created.     We  do  not  expect 


80  THE  WORLD  WITHIN         [Ch.  IV 

to  be  asked  why  we  love  our  child,  we  do  not  rise 
to  explain  why  we  are  ready  to  suffer  for  truth,  we 
do  not  give  any  rationalistic  account  of  devotion 
to  country  or  of  dedication  to  God.  They  seem 
to  us  inevitable  and  self-explanatory. 

What  will  eventually  rise  to  the  apex  of  a  per- 
son's hierarchy  of  values  cannot  well  be  predicted. 
Here  men  differ.  There  is  no  absolute  arbiter  of 
values.  Should  Galileo  put  devotion  to  truth 
above  loyalty  to  his  Church  or  not?  Does  one's 
moral  obligation  outrank  the  requirements  of 
love?  How  do  the  claims  of  country  take  grade 
with  the  soul's  interior  conviction  of  what  is  due 
to  God?  The  answers  vary.  But  one's  course 
here  is  not  settled  by  debate.  Some  overtopping 
loyalty  rises  in  us  and  holds  us  as  invisible  gravita- 
tion holds  the  earth  in  its  orbit.  Our  ideals,  our 
convictions,  our  elemental  faiths  root  back  into 
the  lives  of  ancestors  and  martyrs.  They  were 
builded  into  our  lives  along  with  the  alphabet. 
They  have  silently  grown  and  twined  into  the  in- 
most fiber  of  our  being,  and  out  of  these  deep  roots 
of  life  one's  supreme  loyalty  flowers  forth.  It  is 
very  solemn  and  sacred  business.  In  the  hour  of 
crisis  the  sincere,  honest  person  feels  as  he  makes 
his  choice,  amid  the  conflicting  issues,  that  he  can- 
not do  otherwise.     To  make  a  different  decision, 


Ch.  IV]     THINGS  BY  WHICH  WE  LIVE       81 

he  would  need  not  a  new  argument,  but  a  change 
of  personality,  an  alteration  of  all  the  values  of 
life. 

IV 

THE   MEANING   OF   OBLIGATION 

One  of  the  ultimate  problems  of  ethics  is  the 
problem  of  moral  authority.  From  whence  comes 
the  moral  imperative?  What  is  the  origin  of  that 
august  thing  we  call  "obligation"?  Who  lays 
upon  us  the  unescapable  "  thou  must,"  or  "  I  can- 
not do  otherwise  "? 

In  the  early  stages  of  the  moral  life,  wmether  in 
the  case  of  the  child  or  of  the  race,  duty  seems  to 
come  from  beyond,  from  outside.  It  is  something 
imposed  by  a  foreign  will.  It  is  not  yet  something 
self-chosen,  or  loved  for  its  own  sake;  it  is  some- 
thing stern  and  harsh  and  forbidding  which  lies 
like  a  specter  across  one's  path,  asking  to  be  done, 
and  it  is  backed  and  buttressed  by  a  sense  of  fear. 
The  will  that  enjoins  it  has  the  dread  power  to 
enforce  it,  and  dire  results  will  follow  if  one  runs 
away  from  duty  or  takes  a  shun-pike  around  it. 
This  is  the  legalistic  stage  of  ethics,  which  has  had 
an  enormous  part  to  play  in  the  discipline  of  the 
child  and  of  the  race,  and  which  lingers  on  as  a 


82  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  IV 

relic  or  survival  in  the  maturer  life  of  multitudes 
of  people.  Duty  at  this  stage  is  always  character- 
istically negative  in  its  form.  It  limits,  restrains, 
and  restricts.  It  confronts  individual  impulse 
with  an  authoritative  command  which  says: 
"  Thou  shalt  not."  It  is  a  stage  of  life  which  di- 
vides persons  into  two  absolutely  sundered  classes 
—  the  sheep  and  the  goats,  i.e.,  those  who  say 
"  yes,"  and  those  who  say  "  no  "  to  the  enjoined 
law  of  righteousness. 

But  however  important  this  moral  stage  of  life 
is,  it  is  not  yet  the  goal  of  ethical  personal  good- 
ness. No  person  is  good,  in  the  highest  and  rich- 
est sense,  until  he  chooses  to  perform  his  deed  be- 
cause he  feels  its  inherent  worth  as  an  aim  of  life, 
and  selects  it  because  he  knows  that  it  is  a  good 
act  to  put  a  life  into.  It  is  thus  self-chosen,  no 
longer  a  thing  of  foreign  compulsion,  and  yet  the 
compulsion  and  the  authority  remain  as  real  and 
as  august  as  ever. 

The  slow  and  gradual  heightening  of  the  ethical 
life,  as  it  passes  over  from  external  authority,  to 
internal,  from  negation  to  affirmation,  from  fear 
to  joy,  is  one  of  the  most  splendid  stories  of  human 
life.  Little  by  little  one  discovers,  as  he  lives  and 
sees  deeper  into  the  meaning  of  things,  that  a  life 
of   duty    is    a    life    of    largeness    and    freedom. 


Ch.  IV]     THINGS  BY  WHICH  WE  LIVE       83 

There  would  be  no  richness,  no  content,  to  a  life 
that  answered  no  calls  of  duty,  a  life  that  remained 
shut  up  in  its  own  self.  The  only  way  to  fulfill 
one's  life  is  to  forget  about  it  and  become  absorbed 
in  something  beyond  it,  to  take  up  a  task  which 
thrusts  itself  in  the  way,  and  to  do  it.  After  each 
such  deed  the  doer  discovers  that,  without  aiming 
for  this  result,  he  himself  has  been  enlarged  and 
enriched  by  it.  He  has  been  more  than  conqueror. 
He  is  now  himself  plus  the  deed  he  has  done.  In 
doing  his  duty  he  has  found  himself.  In  the  path 
of  duty  and  in  the  way  of  obligation  lies  the  road 
to  the  true  realization  of  life  and  of  its  meaning, 
and  in  this  vision  love  casts  out  fear,  and  joy  sup- 
plants dread. 

But  if  duty  is  not  now  imposed  as  an  external 
law  and  is  not  laid  on  us  by  a  foreign  will  which  we 
must  obey  or  take  the  dread  consequences,  where 
does  the  call  come  from,  and  why  is  it  so  august, 
compelling  and  authoritative?  What,  in  a  word, 
makes  duty  duty  and  why  do  we  follow  its  call 
as  though  we  could  not  do  otherwise? 

The  answer,  as  I  see  the  matter,  is  this:  A 
mature  moral  man's  duty  rests  for  him  on  a  clear 
personal  insight,  or  vision,  of  the  course  which 
fits  his  life.  It  will  be  of  necessity  an  action  for 
the  sake  of  an  ideal,  for  action  along  the  line  of 


84  THE  WORLD  WITHIN         [Ch.  IV 

instinct,  i.  e.,  along  a  line  of  least  resistance,  would 
not  be  called  duty.  It  will  not  be  an  action  for  the 
sake  of  pleasure,  nor  will  it  be  taken  in  order  to 
forward  self-interest,  for  acts  of  that  nature  are 
acts  which  do  not  bear  the  brand  and  mark  of  obli- 
gation. All  our  obligations  are  born  out  of  our 
relationship  with  others.  The  very  word  obliga- 
tion means  "  tied-in  "  or  "  tied  together."  As 
soon  as  we  realize  what  fellowship  means  we 
awake  to  duties  and  we  discover  that  we  cannot 
follow  any  easy  primrose  path  that  ends  in  self. 
Duty  is  always  done  for  a  larger  whole  than  one's 
own  me;  it  therefore  always  does  come  from  be- 
yond, and  it  seems,  thus,  even  in  its  highest  reaches, 
to  be  laid  upon  one  from  without. 

We  are  for  purposes  of  life,  bound  in,  not  only 
with  those  who  now  live  and  who  form  our  visible 
society,  but  we  are  bound  in  as  well  with  those  who 
were  before  us  and  with  those  who  will  be  after 
us.  Our  lives  are  never  isolated,  except  in  mental 
abstraction,  but  we  are  in  living  fact  conjunct  with 
a  vast  social  environment  which  shapes  all  our 
action  and  from  which  we  draw  all  our  ideals. 

We  catch  our  visions  of  life  in  a  very  especial 
way  from  the  persons  who  are  our  heroes  and 
models,  or  the  persons  who  have  in  some  way  won 
in  our  thought  a  prestige  and  for  that  reason  get 


Ch.  IV]     THINGS  BY  WHICH  WE  LIVE       85 

from  us  unconscious  and  joyous  imitation.  Living 
in  admiration,  as  we  do,  of  Christ,  and  loving  him 
as  we  must,  if  we  see  what  he  was  and  what  he 
did  for  us,  we  cannot  help  coming  into  life-contact 
and  relationship  with  him,  and  in  some  sense  his 
ideals  become  ours  and  his  outlook  on  the  world 
and  his  desire  for  an  altered  humanity  possess  us 
and  control  us  and  unite  us  in  one  larger  whole 
with  him,  till  we  believe  in  his  belief  and  leap  in 
some  measure  to  his  height  of  living. 

When  in  this  intimate  and  inner  way  he  be- 
comes our  leader  we  are  no  longer  our  mere  selves. 
We  cannot  live  now  for  pleasure  or  for  gain  or 
for  self.  His  will  becomes  in  some  degree  our 
will,  and  we  go  his  way  —  not  because  somebody 
or  some  book  forbids  us  to  do  otherwise,  but  be- 
cause love  constrains  us  and  a  higher  vision  of  an 
ideal  world  compels  us.  This  attitude,  which 
holds  one  fast  as  adamant  to  hard  and  difficult 
duty,  is  not  irrational  but,  when  life  is  conceived 
in  its  wholeness,  is  gloriously  rational.  It  is 
an  attitude,  however,  which  often  perhaps  is 
not  arrived  at  by  clear  and  linked  steps  of 
reasoning. 

But  though  not  articulately  reasoned  out,  in- 
sights of  this  moral  type  may  be  as  rational  as 
the  clearest  logic.     No  one  probably  ever  comes 


86  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  IV 

to  a  decision  to  sacrifice  his  life  for  a  cause  or  for 
a  truth  by  the  mere  persuasion  of  logic.  The 
heroes  who  died  at  Thermopylae  could  not  have 
"  explained  "  the  grounds  of  their  decision.  They 
followed  an  insight  which  was  born  out  of  their 
relation  to  a  country  and  they  could  not  do  other- 
wise. If  instead  of  having  Sparta  for  their  loved 
cause  they  had  been  bound  into  life  with  the 
Founder  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  their  whole  atti- 
tude would  have  altered.  They  would  have 
leaped  to  the  sacrifice  with  the  same  eager  joy,  but 
it  would  now  have  been  a  sacrifice  of  self  to  pre- 
serve and  guard  the  principle  on  which  the  king- 
dom exists  and  grows  —  the  principle  of  love,  and 
that  would  be  as  rational  as  the  other  act  actually 
was. 

Sacrifice  of  self  is  a  feature  of  all  rich  and  pur- 
poseful life.  The  moment  a  person  cares  in- 
tensely for  ideals  he  has  started  on  a  way  of  life 
that  makes  great  demands  and  yet  it  is  also  a  way 
of  great  joy.  Nobody  who  knows  would  ever 
prefer  the  way  of  ease  and  quick  reward.  The 
law  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest  throws  no  light 
here.  "  The  will  to  live,"  or  "  the  will  to  power," 
goes  only  a  little  way  as  an  explanation  of  the 
processes  of  life.     From  somewhere  a  loyalty  to 


Ch.  IV]     THINGS  BY  WHICH  WE  LIVE       87 

ends  that  are  not  of  self  has  got  into  our  human 
fiber,  and  we  cannot  live  without  obeying  that 
loyalty  to  the  ideal  even  though  it  cost  all  we  have 
and  all  we  are. 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  GREAT  VENTURE 

I 

CONCERNING   IMMORTALITY 

We  have  heard  very  much  of  the  problems  con- 
cerning prayer  during  these  years  —  how  long 
they  seem !  ■ — ■  since  the  war  broke  in  upon  our  old 
arrangements,  and  another  problem  has  become 
perhaps  still  more  pressing  —  that  of  immortality. 

The  awed  spirit  holds  its  breath 
Blown  over  by  a  wind  of  death. 

We  have  been  living  face  to  face  with  stagger- 
ing conditions,  and  we  have  been  closer  neighbors 
to  death  than  has  ever  been  the  case  before  since 
there  were  men.  We  have  been  forced  to  ask 
over  again  the  immemorial  questions  of  the  human 
race  and  more  urgently  than  ever  the  question 
which  sooner  or  later  every  man  asks  of  himself, 
"  Do  my  loved  and  lost  still  live  in  another  sphere ; 
shall  we  find  each  other  again,  and  will  there  be  a 
real  fulfillment  and  consummation  of  this  incom- 

88 


Ch.  V]         THE  GREAT  VENTURE  89 

plete  and  fragmentary  earthly  career?"  No 
absolute  answer  can  yet  be  given  to  that  palpitat- 
ing human  question,  though  some  genuine  illumi- 
nation relieves  the  otherwise  appalling  darkness. 
For  many  —  in  fact,  for  multitudes  —  the  Easter 
message  of  the  gospel  is  all  that  is  needed.  It  is 
a  pillar  of  hope  and  a  ground  of  faith.  It  closes 
the  issue  and  settles  all  doubt. 

But  in  a  world  which  has  proved  to  be  in  the 
main  rationally  ordered  and  marvelously  suscept- 
ible to  scientific  treatment,  we  should  expect  to 
find  in  the  natural  order  of  things  some  sort  of 
rational  evidence  that  the  highest  moral  and 
spiritual  values  of  life  are  conserved.  Those  of 
us  who  have  been  accustomed  to  knock  at  the  doors 
of  the  universe  for  answers  to  our  earnest  ques- 
tions can  hardly  help  expecting  nature  to  respond 
in  some  adequate  way  to  this  most  urgent  quest  of 
ours.  It  is  this  rational  quest  of  which  I  propose 
saying  a  few  words. 

There  have  been  in  the  past,  and  there  still  are, 
two  quite  different  ways  of  approaching  the  ques- 
tion of  survival  on  rational  grounds.  We  can 
pursue  the  method  which  is  usually  called  empiri- 
cal, or  we  can  follow  out  the  implications  of  the 
ethical  life.  The  first  method  deals  with  the 
observable  facts  on  which  belief  in  survival  rests. 


go  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  V 

In  the  primitive  and  rudimentary  stage  of  the  race 
dream  experiences  had  important  influence  on  the 
formation  of  man's  ideas  about  the  unseen  world. 
In  his  sleep  he  saw  again  those  who  had  vanished 
from  his  sight.  His  dead  father  appeared  to 
him,  talked  with  him,  and  even  joined  him  in  the 
chase.  It  was,  however,  a  world  quite  different 
from  the  world  of  his  waking  senses.  It  was  not 
a  world  which  he  could  show  to  his  neighbor,  nor 
did  it  have  the  same  rigid,  solid,  verifiable  char- 
acteristics as  did  his  outer  world.  It  was  a 
ghostly  world  with  shadelike  inhabitants.  It  was 
not  a  radiant  and  sunlit  realm;  it  was  dull  and  un- 
lovely. But  in  any  case  most  races  reacting  on 
dreams,  and  probably  on  even  more  impressive 
psychic  experiences,  arrived  at  a  settled  convic- 
tion that  life  of  some  sort  went  on  in  some  kind 
of  other  world.  The  mythologies  of  the  poetic 
races  are  full  of  pictures  and  stories  expanded  out 
of  racial  experiences.  These  psychic  experiences 
have  continued  through  all  human  history,  and  a 
large  body  of  facts  has  slowly  accumulated.  In 
recent  years  the  automatic  writing  and  the  auto- 
matic speaking  of  psychically  endowed  persons 
have  furnished  a  mass  of  interesting  material 
which  can  be  dealt  with  systematically  and  scien- 
tifically. 


Ch.  V]         THE  GREAT  VENTURE  91 

It  is  too  soon,  however,  to  build  any  definite 
hopes  on  this  empirical  evidence.  There  can  be 
no  question  that  some  of  the  reports  which  come 
from  these  "  sensitives  " —  these  psychically  en- 
dowed persons  —  appear,  to  an  unskeptically 
minded  reader  of  them,  to  be  real  communications 
from  persons  in  another  world  or,  at  least,  in  an- 
other part  of  our  world.  This  is  nevertheless  a 
hasty  conclusion.  It  may  be  true,  but  it  is  not  the 
only  possible  conclusion  that  can  be  drawn  from 
the  facts.  It  is  a  mistake  at  this  stage  of  our 
knowledge  to  talk  of  "  scientific "  evidence  of 
survival.  All  that  we  are  warranted  in  saying  is 
that  there  are  many  cumulative  facts  which  may 
eventually  furnish  solid  empirical  evidence  that 
what  we  call  death  does  not  end  personal  life. 
But  at  its  best  the  empirical  approach  seems  to  me 
an  unsatisfactory  way  to  deal  with  this  problem. 
I  should  feel  the  same  way  about  empirical  tests 
of  prayer.  They  do  not  meet  the  case.  The  real 
issue  reaches  deeper.  We  shall,  of  course,  wel- 
come everything  which  adds  to  our  assurance,  but 
I,  for  one,  prefer  to  rest  my  faith  on  other  grounds 
than  these  empirical  ones. 

Far  back  in  the  history  of  the  race  prophets  ap- 
peared who  inaugurated  a  new  way  of  solving 
human  problems.     They   discovered   that  man's 


92  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  V 

life  is  vastly  greater  and  richer  than  he  usually 
knows.  There  is  something  in  him  which  he  can- 
not explain  nor  account  for,  something  which  over- 
flows and  transcends  his  practical,  utilitarian  needs 
and  requirements.  He  feels  himself  allied  with  a 
greater  than  himself,  and  his  thoughts  range  be- 
yond all  finite  margins.  Eternity  seems  to  belong 
to  his  nature.  He  cannot  adjust  himself  to  limits 
either  of  time  or  of  space.  These  prophets  of  the 
soul's  deeper  nature,  especially  those  in  Greece, 
Socrates  and  Plato  for  instance,  insisted  that  there 
must  be  a  world  of  transcending  reality  which  fits 
this  depth  of  life  in  us.  The  moral  and  spiritual 
nature  of  man  is  itself  prophetic  of  a  larger  realm 
of  life  which  corresponds  with  this  inexhaustible 
creative  inner  life.  With  this  moral  insight,  im- 
mortality took  on  new  meaning  and  new  value. 
The  life  after  death  was  no  longer  thought  of  as 
a  dim,  shadowy,  ghostlike  thing,  to  be  dreaded 
rather  than  desired.  It  was  now  thought  of  as 
the  real  life  for  which  this  life  was  only  a  prepara- 
tory stage.  Steadily  this  view  of  the  great  ethical 
prophets  has  gained  its  place  in  the  thought  of 
men,  and  the  mythology  based  on  dreams  and 
psychical  experiences  has  in  measure  lost  its  hold 
on  those  who  think  deeply. 

It  seems  impossible  to  consider  life  —  life  in  its 


Ch.  V]         THE  GREAT  VENTURE  93 

highest  ranges  in  the  form  of  ethical  and  spiritual 
personality  —  as  a  rational  and  significant  affair 
unless  it  is  an  endlessly  unfolding  thing  which  con- 
serves its  gains  and  carries  them  cumulatively  for- 
ward to  ever-increasing  issues.  A  universe  which 
squanders  persons,  who  have  hopes  and  faiths  and 
aspirations  like  ours,  as  it  squanders  its  midges  and 
its  sea-spawn  cannot  be  an  ethical  universe,  what- 
ever else  it  may  be.  It  must  have  some  larger 
sphere  for  us,  it  must  guard  this  most  precious 
thing  for  which  the  rest  of  the  universe  seems  to 
be  made.  The  answer  to  the  question  rests  in  the 
last  resort  in  a  still  deeper  question.  Is  there  a 
Person  or  a  Superperson  at  the  heart  of  things, 
who  really  cares,  who  is  pledged  to  make  the  uni- 
verse come  out  right,  who  wills  forevermore  the 
triumph  of  goodness  —  in  short,  who  guards  and 
guarantees  the  rationality  and  moral  significance  of 
the  universe?  If  there  is  such  a  Person,  immor- 
tality seems  to  me  assured.  If  there  is  not  — 
well,  then  the  whole  stupendous  pile  of  atoms  is 
11  an  insane  sandheap."  That  way  madness  lies. 
It  simply  is  not  thinkable. 

But  from  the  nature  of  the  case  these  supreme 
truths  of  our  spiritual  life  and  of  our  deeper  uni- 
verse cannot  be  proved  as  we  prove  the  facts  of 
sense    or   the    mathematical    relations    of    space. 


94  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  V 

The  moral  and  spiritual  person  must  always  go 
out  to  his  life-issues  as  Abraham  went  out  from 
Ur  of  the  Chaldees,  without  "  knowing"  whither 
he  is  going.  The  moral  discipline,  the  spiritual 
training  of  the  soul,  seems  to  demand  venture, 
risk,  the  will  to  obey  the  lead  of  vision,  faith  in  the 
prophetic  nature  of  the  inner  self,  confidence  in 
"  the  soul's  invincible  surmise."  I,  for  one,  pre- 
fer the  venture  to  empirical  certainty.  I  should 
rather  risk  my  soul  on  my  inner  faith  than  to  have 
the  kind  of  proof  of  survival  that  is  available. 
What  we  have  is  so  great,  so  precious,  so  loaded 
with  prophecy  of  fulfillment,  that  I  am  ready  to 
join  the  father  of  those  who  live  by  faith  and  to 
swing  out  on  that  last  momentous  voyage,  not 
knowing  altogether  whither  I  am  going,  but  sure 
of  God  and  convinced  that 

What  is  excellent,  as  God  lives, 
Is  permanent. 


II 

THE   MIRACLE   AGAIN 

There  are  many  things  in  this  world,  crowded 
with  mysteries  as  it  is,  which  impress  us  with  awe 
and  wonder. 


Ch.  V]         THE  GREAT  VENTURE  95 

Luther,  at  one  of  the  most  trying  and  discourag- 
ing periods  of  his  life,  wrote  to  a  friend: 

"  I  have  recently  seen  two  miracles.  The  first  was 
that,  as  I  looked  out  of  my  window,  I  saw  the  stars 
and  the  sky  and  the  whole  vault  of  heaven,  with  no  pillars 
to  support  it;  and  yet  the  sky  did  not  fall,  and  the  vault 
remained  fast.  But  there  are  some  who  want  to  see  the 
pillars  and  would  like  to  clasp  and  feel  them.  And  when 
they  are  unable  to  do  so  they  fidget  and  tremble  as  if  the 
sky  would  certainly  fall  in.  .  .  .  Again,  I  saw  great, 
thick  clouds  roll  above  us,  so  heavy  that  they  looked  like 
great  seas,  and  I  saw  no  ground  on  which  they  could  rest 
nor  any  barrels  to  hold  them,  and  yet  they  fell  not  on 
us,  but  threatened  us  and  floated  on.  When  they  had 
passed  by,  the  rainbow  shone  forth,  the  rainbow  which 
was  the  floor  that  held  them  up.  It  is  such  a  weak  and 
thin  little  floor  and  roof  that  it  was  almost  lost  in  the 
clouds,  and  looked  more  like  a  ray  coming  through  a 
stained  glass  window  than  like  a  strong  floor,  so  that  it 
was  as  marvelous  as  the  weight  of  the  clouds.  It  actually 
happened  that  this  seemingly  frail  shadow  held  up  the 
weight  of  water  and  protected  us.  But  some  people  look 
at  the  thickness  of  the  cloud  and  the  thinness  of  the  ray, 
and  they  fear  and  worry." 

Another  great  man  who  lived  more  than  two 
hundred  years  after  Luther,  Immanuel  Kant,  used 
to  say:  "Two  things  fill  me  with  unutterable 
awe,  the  silent  stars  above  me  and  the  moral  law 
within  me  " ;  and  most  thoughtful  persons  must 


96  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  V 

have  felt  this  speechless  awe,  I  am  sure,  as  they 
have  looked  up  and  looked  within.  But  there  is 
one  thing  which  fills  me  with  profounder  wonder 
than  Luther's  rainbow  bridge  or  Kant's  silent  stars, 
and  that  is  the  reawakening  of  the  world  in  spring- 
time. It  seems  some  of  these  mornings  almost  as 
though  we  might  hear  the  sons  of  God  once  more 
shouting  for  joy  as  they  behold  the  new  miracle 
of  re-creation  going  on.  If  we  were  not  dulled 
by  habit  and  made  callous  by  seeing  the  miracle 
repeated,  we  should  look  upon  this  new  stream  of 
life  with  those  large  eyes  of  wonder  with  which 
the  first  Adam  saw  his  fresh-made  world.  I  am 
not  surprised  that  men  in  all  ages  have  taken  this 
rebirth  of  the  world  in  spring  as  a  parable  of  a 
deeper  rebirth.  Long  before  there  was  a  Chris- 
tian Easter,  with  its  symbols  of  flowers  and  eggs, 
men  celebrated  the  opening  of  the  flowers  and  the 
hatching  of  the  eggs  because  they  saw  in  these 
events  a  gateway  into  a  deeper  mystery  and  were 
touched  with  wonder  as  to  whether  the  soul  might 
not  also  have  its  reawakening  and  its  new  career 
of  life.  That  Power  that  guides  the  unfolding  of 
the  acorn  and  pushes  up  the  oak,  that  Mind  that 
brings  the  gorgeous  butterfly  out  of  the  dull 
cocoon  and  raises  it  to  its  new  and  winged  career, 
may  well  know  how  to  "  swallow  up  mortality 


Ch.  V]         THE  GREAT  VENTURE  97 

with  life  "  and  bring  us  and  ours  to  a  higher  stage 
of  being.  This  new  and  greater  miracle  of  an- 
other life  beyond  does  not  stagger  us  much  after 
we  have  fully  entered  into  the  wonder  of  the 
spring.  It  is  no  more  difficult  to  carry  a  soul 
safely  over  the  bridge  of  death  into  the  light  and 
joy  of  a  new  world  than  it  is  to  make  a  spring 
dandelion  out  of  one  of  those  strange  winged  seeds 
which  a  child  carelessly  blew  away  last  summer. 
But  here  is  the  dandelion.  It  is  "  common " 
enough.  We  hardly  stop  to  look  down  into  its 
yellow  face  or  to  meditate  on  the  wonder  of  its 
arrival  over  the  narrow  bridge  of  that  flying  seed. 
But  if  we  could  penetrate  all  its  mysteries,  could 
know  it  root  and  all  and  all  in  all,  we  could  see 
through  all  the  mysteries  there  are,  and  we  should 
find  it  easy  to  say:  "  I  believe  in  the  resurrection 
from  the  dead,  and  in  the  life  everlasting." 

As  far  as  we  are  able  to  discover,  the  soul  pos- 
sesses infinite  capacity.  A  blossom  may  reach  its 
perfection  in  a  day,  but  no  one  has  fathomed  the 
possibilities  of  a  human  heart.  Eternity  is  not 
too  vast  for  a  soul  to  grow  in,  if  the  soul  wills  to 
grow.  Why,  then,  should  such  a  being  come  and 
learn  the  meaning  of  duty,  loyalty,  sympathy, 
trust,  and  the  other  spiritual  qualities,  only  to  pass 
as  a  shadow?     My  answer  is  the  one  Browning 


98  THE  WORLD  WITHIN  [Ch.  V 

has  given,  that  "  life  is  just  a  stuff  to  try  the  soul's 
strength  on." 

"If  a  man  die,  shall  he  live  again?"  Our 
heart  as  well  as  our  head  seeks  an  answer.  Know- 
ing that  such  a  hope  is  reasonable  is  not  enough; 
we  wish  to  feel  that  it  is  true.  Here  again  God 
meets  us,  not  only  with  an  outward  promise,  or 
through  the  voices  of  nature,  but  with  an  inward 
conviction  born  of  acquaintance  with  himself. 
We  hear  the  answer  when  we  first  find  him,  but  it 
grows  as  we  learn  to  know  him  better.  This  is 
the  apostle's  assurance:  "  I  know  whom  I  have 
believed,  and  I  am  persuaded  that  he  is  able  to 
keep  that  which  I  have  committed  unto  him 
against  that  day."  "  Learn  of  me,"  said  the  Mas- 
ter, "  and  ye  shall  find  rest  unto  your  souls." 
Yes,  in  this  experience  we  even  cease  questioning. 
We  know  him  and  we  trust.  On  his  love  we  rest. 
Why  should  we  reckon  with  the  grave?  Our 
Father  this  side  shall  be  our  Father  beyond.  We 
are  trusting  him  here ;  we  can  trust  him  there. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  SOUL'S  CONVERSE 

I 

PRAYER  AS   AN   ENERGY   OF   LIFE 

Clement  of  Alexandria  many  centuries  ago 
thought  of  prayer  as  "  a  mutual  and  reciprocal 
correspondence  "  or  "  inward  converse  with  God." 
For  this  great  Christian  teacher  prayer  was  not  a 
solitary,  one-sided  act.  It  was  a  two-sided  inter- 
course, a  reciprocal  correspondence,  a  real  respon- 
sive relationship.  This  two-sided  aspect  has  been 
recognized  through  all  the  centuries  as  an  essen- 
tial characteristic  of  genuine  prayer.  William 
James  is  expressing  what  most  serious-minded  men 
think  when  he  says  that  religion  would  turn  out  to 
be  illusory  if  there  were  no  such  thing  as  real, 
mutual,  active  intercourse  between  the  human  soul 
and  God;  if,  as  he  declares,  the  intercourse  be  not 
effective;  "  if  it  be  not  a  give  and  take  relation;  if 
nothing  be  really  transacted  while  it  lasts;  if  the 
world  is  in  no  whit  different  for  its  having  taken 

99 


ioo  THE  WORLD  WITHIN         [Ch.  VI 

place."  *  In  dealing  for  the  present  in  this  chap- 
ter with  the  psychological  fact  that  prayer  is  dyna- 
mic, i.  e.,  an  interior  heightening  energy,  I  do  not 
want  any  reader  to  assume  that  I  am  surrendering 
that  other  fact,  equally  essential  to  all  real  prayer, 
namely,  that  it  is  a  mutual,  two-sided  correspond- 
ence. 

It  must,  too,  be  taken  for  granted  that  prayer, 
true  effectual  prayer,  has  a  range  of  influence  far 
beyond  the  personal  life  of  the  one  who  prays. 
No  person  is  ever  isolated,  unrelated  and  alone. 
He  is  bound  in  with  the  lives  of  a  living  group, 
an  inseparable  member  of  an  organic  fellowship. 
No  man  liveth  unto  himself,  no  man  dieth  unto 
himself  and  no  man  prays  resultfully  for  himself 
alone.  What  we  are  and  what  we  do  flow  out  and 
help  to  determine  what  others  shall  be  and  shall 
do,  and  even  so  in  the  highest  spiritual  operations 
and  activities  of  the  soul  we  contribute  some  part 
toward  the  formation  of  the  spiritual  atmosphere 
in  which  others  are  to  live  and  we  help  to  release 
currents  of  spiritual  energy  for  others  than  our- 
selves. If  we  belong,  as  I  believe  we  do,  in  a  real 
kingdom  of  God  —  an  organic  fellowship  of  inter- 
related lives  —  prayer  should  be  as  effective  a 
force  in  this  inter-related  social  world  of  ours  as 

1  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  465. 


Ch.  VI]       THE  SOUL'S  CONVERSE,  ioi 

gravitation  is  in  the  world  of  matter.  Personal 
spirits  experience  spiritual  gravitation,  soul 
reaches  after  soul,  hearts  draw  toward  each  other. 
We  are  no  longer  in  the  net  of  blind  fate,  in  the 
realm  of  impersonal  force  —  we  are  in  a  love- 
system  where  the  aspiration  of  one  member  height- 
ens the  entire  group,  and  the  need  of  one  —  even 
the  least  —  draws  upon  the  resources  of  the  whole 
—  even  the  Infinite.  We  are  in  actual  Divine- 
human  fellowship. 

The  only  obstacle  to  effectual  praying,  in  this 
world  of  spiritual  fellowship,  would  be  individual 
selfishness.     To  want  to  get  just  for  one's  own 
self,  to  ask  for  something  which  brings  loss  and 
injury  to  others,  would  be  to  sever  one's  self  from 
the  source  of  blessings,  and  to  lose  not  only  the 
thing  sought,  but  to  lose,  as  well,  one's  very  self. 
This  principle  is  true  anywhere,  even  in  ordi- 
nary human  friendship.     It  is  true,  too,  in  art  and 
in  music.     The  artist  may  not  force  some  personal 
caprice  into  his  creation.     He  must  make  himself 
the  organ  of  a  universal  reality  which  is  beautiful, 
not  simply  for  this  man  or  that,  but  for  man  as 
man.     If  there  is,  as  I  believe,  an  inner  kingdom 
of  spirit,  a  kingdom  of  love  and  fellowship,  then 
it  is  a  fact  that  a  tiny  being  like  one  of  us  can 
impress  and  influence  the  Divine  Heart,  and  we 


102  THE  WORLD  WITHIN         [Ch.  VI 

can  make  our  personal  contribution  to  the  Will  of 
the  universe,  but  we  can  do  it  only  by  wanting  what 
everybody  can  share,  and  by  seeking  blessings 
which  have  a  universal  implication. 

I  am  dealing,  it  must  be  remembered,  with  the 
dynamic  aspect  of  prayer.  Prayer  releases  energy 
as  certainly  as  the  closing  of  an  electric  circuit 
does.  It  heightens  all  human  capacities.  It 
refreshes  and  quickens  life.  It  unlocks  reservoirs 
of  power.  It  opens  invisible  doors  into  new 
storehouses  of  spiritual  force  for  the  person  to  live 
by,  and,  as  I  believe,  for  others  to  live  by  as  well. 
It  is  effective  and  operative  as  surely  as  are  the 
forces  of  steam  and  gravitation. 

The  recent  important  psychological  studies  of 
prayer  all  agree  in  this  one  point,  that  most  per- 
sons while  engaged  in  earnest,  sincere  prayer  feel 
an  inflow  or  invasion  of  greater  power  than  they 
were  conscious  of  before  they  prayed,  and  Chris- 
tians of  all  types  and  communions,  of  all  lands  and 
of  all  periods,  unite  in  bearing  testimony  to  this 
truth.  "  Energy,"  as  William  James  says, 
"  which  but  for  prayer  would  be  bound,  is  by 
prayer  set  free  and  operates." 

Frederick  Myers  was  drawing  upon  his  own  ex- 
perience when  he  wrote :  "  Our  spirits  are  sup- 
ported by  a  perpetual  indrawal  of  energy  and  the 


Ch.  VI]       THE  SOUL'S  CONVERSE  103 

vigor  of  that  indrawal  is  perpetually  changing. 
.  .  .  Plainly  we  must  endeavor  to  draw  in  as  much 
spiritual  life  as  possible  and  we  must  place  our 
minds  in  any  attitude  which  experience  shows  to 
be  favorable  to  such  indrawal.  Prayer  is  the  gen- 
eral name  for  that  attitude  of  open  and  earnest 
expectancy." 

There  can  be  no  question  that  all  effective 
dynamic  prayer  rises  out  of  living  faith.  A  person 
cannot  let  himself  go  and  pour  out  his  soul  as  he 
knocks  at  the  great  doors  of  the  divine  world  un- 
less he  believes  that  there  is  a  divine  world  that 
will  be  reached  by  his  cry  of  need.  We  hear  much 
talk  in  these  days  of  the  subjective  character  of 
prayer,  but  you  cannot  cut  the  subjective  aspect  of 
prayer  away  from  the  objective  aspect  and  keep 
the  former  a  thing  of  value  and  power  by  itself 
any  more  than  you  can  cut  the  convex  side  of  a 
curve  away  from  the  concave  side  and  keep  either 
a  reality  by  itself  alone.  In  order  to  have  subjec- 
tive results  there  must  be  live  faith  in  an  objec- 
tive reality.  A  person  cannot  in  this  present 
world  of  gravitation  lift  himself  by  his  belt  or  by 
his  boot-straps,  nor  can  he  any  more  easily,  in  the 
inner  world  of  spiritual  facts,  lift  himself  or  others 
out  of  sin  or  sorrow  or  loneliness  or  failure  or  lit- 
tleness by  subjective  strivings  which  attach  to  no 


104  THE  WORLD  WITHIN         [Ch.  VI 

objective  support  beyond  the  margin  of  his  own 
personal  area.  The  moment  the  objective  side 
drops  out  or  is  assumed  to  be  illusory,  the  mo- 
ment we  convince  ourselves  that  our  Great  Com- 
panion is  only  a  dream  of  our  own,  we  immediately 
fail  to  get  dynamic  effects  from  our  subjective 
strivings.  Brother  Lawrence  was  right  when  he 
said:  "  It  is  into  the  soul  permeated  with  living 
faith  that  God  pours  his  graces  and  his  favors 
plenteously.  Into  the  soul  they  flow  like  an  im- 
petuous torrent,  when  it  finds  a  passage  for  its  pent 
up  flood  after  being  dammed  back  from  its  ordi- 
nary course  by  some  obstacle." 

We  cannot  live  constructively  toward  any  end 
of  life  as  our  operative  goal  or  ideal  until  we  can 
make  that  goal  or  ideal  seem  real  to  ourselves. 
It  must  not  be  vain  or  illusory  if  it  is  to  hold  us 
fixed  and  pointed  toward  it.  It  must  not  seem  to 
us  a  will-o'-the-wisp,  a  mirage,  if  it  is  to  control 
us  and  steer  us  forward  through  the  storms  and 
waterspouts  of  life.  We  build  our  lives  by  visions 
of  real  goals  that  are  worth  our  venture  and  only 
so  can  we  rise  above  the  level  of  instinct,  the  dull 
bread-and-butter  life.  But  what  is  true  here  in 
the  field  of  ethics  is  also  true  in  the  realm  of 
prayer.  We  must  have  faith  in  the  Beyond.  We 
need  not  wait  until  we  can  demonstrate  the  cer- 


Ch.  VI]       THE  SOUL'S  CONVERSE  105 

tainty  of  what  the  far-reaching  tentacles  of  our 
heart  feel  to  be  real,  but  at  least  we  must  have  a 
soul's  vision  of  a  More  Than  Ourselves  to  whom 
we  turn,  on  whom  we  rely  and  from  whom  we 
expect  what  we  need  for  ourselves  and  others  to 
live  by.  The  wonderful  praying  of  the  great  mys- 
tics is  due  to  their  wonderful  faith.  They  get 
what  they  seek  because  they  expect  to  get  it. 
They  absolutely  trust  the  far-flung  tentacles  of 
their  soul.  One  of  our  American  poets  who  was 
himself  a  mystic  has  well  expressed  this  venture  of 
"  the  soul's  filament,"  the  flinging  forth  of  "  the 
ductile  anchor." 

"  A  noiseless,  patient  spider, 

I  mark'd,  where,  on  a  little  promontory,  it  stood  isolated ; 
Mark'd  how,  to  explore  the  vacant,  vast  surrounding, 
It   launched    forth    filament,    filament,    filament,    out    of 

itself. 
Ever  unreeling  them  —  ever  tirelessly  speeding  them. 

"  And  you,  O  my  Soul,  where  you  stand, 
Surrounded,  surrounded,  in  measureless  oceans  of  space, 
Ceaselessly    musing,    venturing,    throwing, —  seeking    the 

spheres  to  connect  them ; 
Till  the  bridge  you  will  need,  be  form'd  —  till  the  ductile 

anchor  hold ; 
Till  the  gossamer  thread  you  fling,  catch  somewhere,  O 

my  Soul." 


io6  THE  WORLD  WITHIN         [Ch.  VI 

Saint  Teresa  in  a  multitude  of  passages  describ- 
ing her  experience  of  the  effect  of  prayer  always 
ascribes  the  reflex  power  to  her  own  consciousness 
or  feeling  of  the  presence  of  God  upon  whom  she 
throws  herself.  "  I  could,"  she  says,  "  in  no  wise 
doubt,  either  that  he  was  in  me  or  that  I  was 
absorbed  in  him."  I  kept  full  of  the  thought  of 
the  presence  of  God,  she  says  in  substance.  I  la- 
bored to  remove  every  thought  of  bodily  objects 
and  set  myself  to  be  recollected  before  him.  I 
feel,  she  continues,  a  very  deep  conviction  that 
God  is  with  me  when  I  pray  and  I  see,  too,  that  I 
grow  stronger  and  better  thereby. 

Our  surface  life  of  effort  and  conscious  striving 
is  split  up  into  many  fragmentary  aims  and  into 
many  conflicting  activities.  We  are  carried  about 
by  shifting  winds  and  by  the  drive  of  cross-cur- 
rents. When  we  "  return  home,"  as  the  mystics 
say,  to  our  deeper  self  and  enter  into  our  inner 
sanctuary  we  are  borne  along  and  unified  by  one 
great  ground-swell  longing  for  the  life  that  is  Life. 
We  fall  away  from  and  lose  our  little  self  —  our 
selfish  self  —  and  find  a  deep-lying  conjunct  or 
comprehensive  self  that  is  always  more  than  we. 
In  these  truest  moments  of  prayer  a  man  comes 
upon  that  rock-bottom  experience  which  a  great 


Ch.  VI]       THE  SOUL'S  CONVERSE  107 

ancient  soul  had  met  when  he   said:     "Under- 
neath are  the  everlasting  arms." 

The  unification  of  the  usually  scattered  forces 
of  our  inner  self,  the  concentration  of  all  our  pow- 
ers toward  one  perfect  end,  the  focussing  of  the 
soul's  aspiration  and  loyalty  upon  one  central  real- 
ity that  is  adequate  for  us,  the  surrender  of  our 
own  will  to  a  holier  and  mightier  will,  produce  just 
the  inner  conditions  that  are  essential  for  the 
flooding  in  of  spiritual  energy,  and  for  the  release 
of  it  for  others  who  are  in  need  of  it.  Everybody 
knows  what  it  is  suddenly  to  lose  all  fears  and 
fear-thoughts  that  have  obsessed  one  and  to  rise 
up  with  courage  to  face  the  tasks  that  are  waiting 
to  be  done.  We  have  all  some  time  seen  the  shad- 
ows flee  away  or  we  have  seen  them  pierced  by  a 
light  that  obliterated  the  shadow  and  left  us  in 
possession  of  insight  and  a  forward  looking  atti- 
tude which  conquered  the  difficulty  in  advance. 
The  literature  of  conversion  is  full  of  records  of 
men  and  women,  beaten  and  defeated,  suddenly 
lifted  to  new  levels  of  experience,  put  in  reach  of 
transforming  forces,  flooded  with  transfiguring 
light,  convinced  of  new  possibilities  and  becoming 
in  the  strength  of  the  experience  "  twice-born  '' 
persons.     When   I   speak   of   "  unification r    and 


io8  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  VI 

"  concentration  "  I  do  not  mean  that  they  are  the 
result  of  conscious  effort.  Quite  the  opposite  is 
generally  the  case.  There  is  no  thought  of  what 
is  happening  to  one's  self  in  genuine  prayer.  The 
worshiper  is  utterly  absorbed  with  God  and  with 
the  joy  and  wonder  of  his  Presence,  and  thus  the 
usual  strain  and  tension  of  thought  fall  away  as 
they  do  also  in  the  presence  of  an  object  of  perfect 
beauty  or  when  one  is  listening  to  great  music. 
Just  that  cessation  of  conscious  direction,  that 
absence  of  conscious  effort  is  probably  the  best 
way  to  secure  the  release  of  hidden  energies  within 
the  subconscious  life.  Even  the  physical  attitude 
of  prayer,  the  release  of  all  muscle  strain  in  the 
eyes,  the  momentary  exclusion  of  the  whole  sensi- 
ble universe  from  the  field  of  consciousness  assist 
the  worshiper  to  relax,  to  let  go  of  time  and  space 
and  to  break  through  into  the  region  where  fresh 
currents  of  life  are  stored  and  circulate.  Richard 
Cabot  is  undoubtedly  right  when  he  says  in  his 
splendid  book,  What  Men  Live  By,  that  prayer 
fulfills  what  play  and  art  and  love  attempt.  It 
heightens,  as  those  other  higher  attitudes  and  ac- 
tivities of  life  do,  all  our  forces ;  it  fortifies  and  re- 
integrates the  self,  restores  the  depleted  energies, 
orientates  us  when  we  are  lost,  confused,  or  per- 
plexed and  it  renews  and  heartens  the  soul,  as  sleep 


Ch.  VI]       THE  SOUL'S  CONVERSE  109 

does  the  body.  Prayer  is  beyond  question  an 
energy-releasing  function  of  life.  It  is  as  impor- 
tant for  the  health  of  the  soul  as  exercise  is  for 
the  body  or  as  the  fresh  search  after  truth  is  for 
the  mind. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  and  valuable  testi- 
monies to  the  dynamic  and  curative  character  of 
the  prayer  of  faith  is  that  given  by  Dr.  Theodore 
Hyslop,  a  specialist  of  great  reputation  in  the 
treatment  of  mental  diseases.  Speaking  at  the 
annual  meeting  of  the  British  Medical  Association 
in  1905,  he  said:  — 

"  As  an  alienist  and  one  whose  whole  life  has  been 
concerned  with  the  sufferings  of  the  mind,  I  would  state 
that  of  all  hygienic  measures  to  counteract  disturbed 
sleep,  depressed  spirits,  and  all  the  miserable  sequels  of 
a  distressed  mind,  I  would  undoubtedly  give  the  first 
place  to  the  simple  habit  of  prayer.  .  .  .  Let  there  but 
be  a  habit  of  nightly  communion,  not  as  a  mendicant  or 
repeater  of  words  more  adapted  to  the  tongue  of  a  sage, 
but  as  a  humble  individual  who  submerges  or  asserts  his 
individuality  as  an  integral  part  of  a  greater  whole. 
Such  a  habit  does  more  to  clean  the  spirit  and  strengthen 
the  soul  to  overcome  mere  incidental  emotionalism  than 
any  other  therapeutic  agent  known  to  me.  ...  I 
believe  it  to  be  our  object,  as  teachers  and  physicians, 
to  fight  against  all  those  influences  which  tend  to  produce 
either  religious  intemperance  or  indifference,  and  to 
subscribe,  as  best  we  may,  to  that  form  of  religious  belief, 


no  THE  WORLD  WITHIN         [Ch.  VI 

so  far  as  we  can  find  it  practically  embodied  or  effective, 
which  believes  in  '  the  larger  hope.'  " 

This  is  undoubtedly  the  case  and  it  would  not 
be  difficult  to  gather  a  very  large  amount  of  con- 
crete testimony  to  the  reflex  power  of  prayer  upon 
the  person  praying.  One  of  Professor  James  B. 
Pratt's  correspondents  declares  that,  although  he 
is  predominantly  skeptical,  at  rare  intervals  he 
"  stops  fighting  "  and  "  relies  on  assistance,"  and 
he  adds  that  at  such  moments  he  experiences 
"  something  like  a  movement  of  God  "  toward 
him.  He  feels  "  an  immediate  response."  The 
result  is  "  immediate  quieting  of  the  nerves  "  and 
the  mental  result  is  a  reenforcement  of  courage. 
An  anonymous  writer  in  the  New  York  "  Out- 
look "  a  few  years  ago  gave  an  impressive  account 
of  his  own  personal  experience.  He  tells  how 
again  and  again  in  moments  of  supreme  doubt, 
disappointment,  discouragement,  or  unhappiness 
a  prayer  uttered  in  faith  has  been  followed  by 
"  quick  and  astonishing  relief."     He  says: 

"  Sometimes  doubt  has  been  transformed  into  confident 
assurance,  mental  weakness  utterly  routed  by  strength, 
self-distrust  changed  into  self-confidence,  fear  into 
courage,  dismay  into  confident  and  brightest  hope. 

"  These  transitions  have  sometimes  come  by  degrees 
— «  in  the  course,  let  us  say,  of  an  hour  or  two ;  at  other 


Ch.  VI]       THE  SOUL'S  CONVERSE  in 

times  they  have  been  instantaneous,  flashing  up  in  brain 
and  heart  as  if  a  powerful  electric  stroke  had  cleared  the 
air,  even  as  a  lightning  flash  will  dispel  the  darkness  of 
densest  midnight,  or  clear  away  grandly  the  murkiness  of 
sultry  August  debilitation. 

11  These  experiences  have  been  marked  in  the  very 
ratio  of  the  emergency  which  occasioned  the  utterance 
of  the  prayer.  Over  and  over  again,  they  have  come 
with  such  unexpected  quickness  and  power  that  in  jus- 
tice to  myself  I  could  but  rush  to  transcribe  them,  that 
in  future  times  of  distress  I  should  have  them  to  recur  to. 
So  marked  have  they  been  at  times  that  I  could  simply 
say  to  myself,  in  a  tumult  of  gladness,  '  The  age  of 
miracles  has  by  no  means  passed.'  They  have  been  fol- 
lowed often  by  a  new  outward  buoyancy  of  spirit,  even 
in  those  critical  hours  in  which  outwardly  there  was  the 
greatest  cause  for  a  very  different  frame  of  mind.  They 
have  helped  me  through  periods  of  bodily  sickness,  coming 
like  great,  glad  breaths  of  fresh  air  after  the  smothering 
influence  of  an  atmosphere  charged  with  what  was  nox- 
ious." 

The  actual  "  law  "  by  which  such  things  happen 
so  far  escapes  us.  We  know  that  there  are  reser- 
voirs of  energy  waiting  to  be  tapped  and  drawn 
upon,  but  for  the  most  part  we  trudge  our  dusty 
highway  and  do  not  unlock  the  hidden  door.  We 
sometimes  seal  up  the  door  and  live  on  almost 
entirely  forgetful  and  utterly  unconscious  of  how 
near  we  are  to  help.     "  There  are,"   as  James 


ii2  THE  WORLD  WITHIN        [Ch.  VI 

forcibly  says,  "  in  every  one  potential  forms  of 
activity  that  are  shunted  out  from  use.     Part  of 
the  imperfect  vitality  under  which  we  labor  can 
thus  be  easily  explained.     One  part  of  our  mind 
dams  up  —  even  damns  up  !  —  the  other  parts." 
But  to  most  of  us  who  pray  the  door  does  some- 
times open  into  larger,  divine  life  and  the  strength 
floods  back  into  us.     Our  judgment  is  clarified, 
our  power  to  endure  "  the  thorn  in  the  flesh,"  or 
the  crushing  loss  or  the  terrible  separation  is  im- 
mensely enlarged,  our  resistance  to  subtle  tempta- 
tions is  backed  by  unexpected  aid,  our  conquest  of 
pettiness  and  irritation  becomes  an  easy  matter 
and  all  our  more  ideal  traits,  for  the  time  being, 
get   their   chance   to   come    into    full   play.     Ex- 
hausted, gone  stale,  fatigued  with  the  strain  and 
stress  of  standing  the  "  weary  weight  of  all  this 
unintelligible    world "    we    suddenly    feel    "  the 
voiceless  powers  "  of  life  flowing  round  our  tired 
soul,  reinforcements  arriving  to  augment  us  and 
peace  and  love  coming  to  blossom  as  though  the 
climate  of  a  divine  world  had  flooded  us  with  its 
spring. 

"  How  entered,  by  what  secret  stair 

I  know  not,  knowing  only  He  is  there." 

And  what  I  have  said  of  the  inner  transformation 


Ch.  VI]       THE  SOUL'S  CONVERSE  113 

through  prayer  is  also  true  of  the  intercessory 
effect  of  prayer.  In  this  world  of  inter-related 
lives  one  of  us  can  "  send  his  soul  out  "  for  the 
sake  of  others  and  the  far-reaching  results  of 
such  prayer  are  beyond  question. 

Pentecost  is  not  a  thing  of  the  almanac.  It  is 
not  alone  an  event  of  antiquity  in  an  upper  room 
in  Jerusalem.  It  is  the  high-tide  experience  of 
this  consciousness  of  inrushing  life  and  power. 
Something  like  it  has  happened  often  to  men  who 
were  not  apostles.  These  men  "  of  one  accord 
in  one  place  "  pushed  back  a  door  and  the  flood 
swept  in — "the  Holy  Ghost  fell  upon  them." 
So,  too,  in  all  ages  streams  from  the  Beyond  flow 
in  when  the  door  is  really  flung  open,  and  men 
say  even  to-day  that  the  Holy  Ghost  is  an  experi- 
ence. 

Prayer,  real  prayer,  does  "  make  a  difference." 
Power  to  live  by  comes  through  this  immemorial 
act  of  the  soul.  The  discovery  that  we  are  in  a 
world  of  law  does  not  alter  the  fact.  The  irre- 
sistible evidence  that  the  realm  of  nature  is  a  realm 
where  causation  holds  sway  need  not  disturb  us. 
Law  and  causation  no  more  interfere  with  prayer 
than  they  do  with  love  or  with  beauty.  James 
Martineau  has  finely  dealt  with  this  point  and 
his  words  are  appropriate  here.     He  says  — 


ii4  THE  WORLD  WITHIN         [Ch.  VI 

"  God's  rule  of  action  in  nature  we  have  every  reason 
to  regard  as  unalterable;  established  as  an  inflexible  and 
faithful  basis  of  expectation;  and,  for  that  reason,  not 
open  to  perpetual  variation  on  the  suggestion  of  occa- 
sional moral  contingencies.  God,  however,  is  infinite, 
and  the  laws  of  nature  do  not  exhaust  his  agency.  There 
is  a  boundless  residue  of  disengaged  faculty  beyond.  Be- 
hind and  amid  all  these  punctualities  of  law  abides,  in 
infinite  remainder,  the^  living  and  unpledged  spirit. 
Here  he  has  made  no  rule  but  the  everlasting  rule  of 
holiness,  and  written  no  pledge  but  the  pledge  of  in- 
extinguishable love;  hence,  without  violated  rule,  he  can 
individualize  his  regards;  enter  with  gentle  help;  and 
while  keeping  faith  with  the  universe,  knock  at  the  gate  of 
every  lonely  heart." 

There  is  no  solid  hindrance  to  prayer  except 
ourselves.  We  ourselves  raise  the  barriers  and 
set  up  the  obstacles.  Still  as  of  old  the  soul 
finds  what  it  undividedly  seeks,  it  gets  what  it 
persistently  asks  for,  it  brings  open  the  door  at 
which  it  unremittingly  knocks.  Everywhere  in 
the  universe  the  soul  may  have  what  it  wants. 
If  it  hungers  and  thirsts  for  God,  it  will  be  fed 
with  the  bread  of  life  and  supplied  with  the  wa- 
ter that  satisfies.  The  difficulty  is  not  objective; 
it  is  subjective.  We  so  often  do  not  really  pray. 
We  only  say  over  words  and  call  it  "  prayer." 
Let  us  instead  learn  to  pray. 


Ch.  VI]       THE  SOUL'S  CONVERSE  115 

"  I  that  still  pray  at  morning  and  at  eve, 
Loving  those  roots  that  feed  us  from  the  past, 
And  prizing  more  than  Plato  things  I  learned 
At  that  best  Academe,  a  mother's  knee, 
Thrice  in  my  life  perhaps  have  truly  prayed, 
Thrice,  stirred  below  my  conscious  self,  have  felt 
That  perfect  disenthralment  which  is  God." 

II 
PRAYER   AND   REFLECTION 

There  are  multitudes  of  life  functions  which 
are  simple  enough  and  easy  and  natural,  until  we 
ask  how  or  why  we  do  them.  They  go  on  all 
right  until  reflection  upsets  them!  I  imagine  the 
bird's  homing  instinct  would  be  palsied  if  the 
bird  reflected. 

Not  long  ago,  just  at  evening  dusk,  I  heard  a 
"  honk-honk  "  in  the  air  almost  over  my  head.  I 
knew  at  once  what  it  meant  —  the  wild  geese  fly- 
ing by.  Old  memories  came  rushing  back  and 
with  the  enthusiasm  of  a  child  I  ran  out  into  the 
field  to  see  the  well-known  V,  with  its  leader  at 
the  angle,  wheeling  south.  The  thin  fringes  of 
ice  on  the  northern  lakes  had  warned  them  of 
coming  trouble,  and  obedient  to  instinct  they  had 
started  for  the  warmer  lands.  They  did  not  know 
the  way.     They  never  would  have  started  if  they 


n6  THE  WORLD  WITHIN         [Ch.  VI 

had  "  reflected  "  on  the  difficulties  of  finding  a 
path  across  fifteen  states.  They  felt  the  strong 
push  of  infallible  instinct.  They  obeyed  its 
thrust  and  soon  they  were  swimming  on  the  warm 
waters  of  the  sunny  Florida  lakes  ! 

"  The  centipede  was  happy,  quite, 

Until  the  toad  for  fun 

Said,  '  pray,  which  leg  comes  after  which?  ' 

This  worked  her  mind  to  such  a  pitch 

She  lay  distracted  in  a  ditch, 

Considering  how  to  run." 

Zeno  of  Elis,  in  the  early  days  of  reflection, 
very  successfully  proved  by  an  irresistible  mathe- 
matically-sound argument  that  it  is  impossible  to 
walk  across  a  room.  Diogenes  solved  the  re- 
flective dilemma  by  getting  up  and  walking.  Ever 
since  this  simple,  practical  experiment  the  world 
has  cherished  the  proverb:  "  solvitur  ambulando." 

Many  problems  which  reflection  has  forced 
upon  us  can  be  solved  by  a  bold  return  to  concrete 
experience  and  to  spontaneous  unanalyzed  action, 
such  as  occurs  under  sudden  inspiration.  Adven- 
ture precedes  knowledge  in  the  order  of  our  ex- 
perience and  a  return  to  adventure  often  saves 
us  from  the  perplexities  into  which  excessive  re- 
flection has  brought  us.  "  To  trust  the  soul's 
invincible  surmise  "  and  to  go  forward,  like  Abra- 


Ch.  VI]       THE  SOUL'S  CONVERSE  117 

ham,  even  without  knowing  the  way  or  the  coun- 
try at  the  end  of  it,  is  one  of  the  surest  methods 
of  conquering  intellectual  difficulties.  Donald 
Hankey  is  emphasizing  this  aspect  of  adventure  in 
life's  highest  concerns  when  he  declares  that  "  Re- 
ligion is  betting  your  life  that  there  is  a  God  " 
—  risking  neck  and  everything  else  on  the  high 
faith  that  "  God  will  make  the  heavenly  period 
perfect  the  earthen."  "  The  spiritual  life,"  as 
Professor  Coe  has  somewhere  said,  "  is  strongest 
when  it  is  most  akin  to  habit  and  instinct."  When 
one  takes  it  apart  and  looks  at  it,  it  is  hard  to 
get  it  together  again. 

Worship  is,  I  believe,  as  spontaneous  and  nat- 
ural a  function  of  the  soul  as  is  appreciation  of 
love  or  enjoyment  of  beauty.  It  fulfills  what  play 
and  art  and  music  and  love  attempt.  It  brings 
joy,  fortification  and  power.  Worship  is  the 
joyous  discovery  of  something  very  real  and  very 
near,  which  meets  all  the  soul's  deepest  needs  and 
which  brings  a  spontaneous  dedication  of  self  to 
what  seems  the  Highest.  It  is  creative,  refresh- 
ing, vivifying,  quickening,  dynamic,  just  because 
it  is  correspondence  with  the  divine,  energizing, 
recreative  Spirit.  William  James  is  undoubtedly 
right  when  he  says  that  prayerful  communion  "  ac- 
tually exerts  an  influence,  raises  our  center  of  en- 


n8  THE  WORLD  WITHIN         [Ch.  VI 

ergy  and  produces  effects  not  attainable  in  other 
ways." 

Our  main  question,  of  course,  is  how  to  keep 
the  way  open  and  previous  to  this  immense  re- 
source. So  long  as  religious  faith  is  alive,  ex- 
pectant and  unopposed  by  intellectual  inhibitions, 
times  of  worship  are  times  of  great  joy.  It  is 
an  experience  which  brings  enlargement  of  life, 
spaciousness  of  mind,  new  dimension  to  the  soul, 
a  sense  of  breaking  through  the  limits  and  of 
finding  room  for  the  soul;  what  a  friend  of  mine 
has  called  "  a  hole  in  the  sky."  Times  of  com- 
munion with  God  are  times  when  life  comes  to  its 
full  bloom  and  flower.  Worship  is  the  very  crown 
of  life.  It  is  attainment.  The  soul  for  the 
moment  has  arrived.  It  has  found  the  Kingdom 
of  God.  But  our  main  problem  here  is  with 
the  intellectual  inhibitions  which  blight  or  kill 
faith  and  so  damp  worship  and  make  the  way  im- 
pervious to  these  great  resources  of  the  soul. 

Long  ago  St.  Augustine  said:  "  One  journey- 
eth  to  God  not  in  ships,  nor  in  chariots,  nor  on 
foot;  for  to  journey  thither  to  God,  nay  even 
to  arrive  there,  is  nothing  else  but  to  will  to  go !  ' 
If  that  is  so  the  difficulty  is  with  the  will.  But  we 
now  know  that  "  willing  "  means  the  dominating 
prevalence  of  a  live  idea,  its  power  to  command 


Ch.  VI]       THE  SOUL'S  CONVERSE  119 

attention,  its  impulsion  and  coerciveness  in  the  oc- 
cupancy of  the  focus  of  consciousness.  Let  the 
thought  of  God  as  a  personal  presence  once  fill 
the  mind  with  its  warmth  and  intimacy  of  reality, 
let  no  rival  ideas  disintegrate  this  faith,  this  reign- 
ing system  in  consciousness,  and  worship,  with  all 
its  constructive  results,  follows,  as  action  follows 
any  idea  which  dominates  the  focus  of  conscious- 
ness. Worship  fails,  however,  as  soon  as  the 
thought  of  God  ceases  to  be  a  live,  dynamic  idea, 
as  soon  as  the  reality  of  a  personal  God  in  relation 
with  our  personal  selves  loses  its  power  to  com- 
mand attention  —  ceases  to  make  the  will  propul- 
sive. We  cannot  live  constructively  toward  any 
goal  of  life  until  we  can  make  that  goal  seem  real, 
vital  and  important  to  ourselves. 

In  this  particular  field,  the  field  of  worship, 
we  inhibit  our  spontaneous  instinctive  tendencies 
to  seek  communion  and  fellowship  with  God  by 
taking  up  reflective,  intellectual  theories  of  the 
universe,  or  of  God,  or  of  self,  which  banish  God 
and  make  him  unreal,  remote, —  no  longer  a 
live  dynamic  idea  in  consciousness.  The  fetters 
of  the  intellect  become  as  strong  as  adamant, 
and  as  a  consequence  worship  becomes  difficult. 
These  intellectual  inhibitions  are  of  many  sorts 
and  varieties,  but  in  the  main  they  come  as  by- 


120  THE  WORLD  WITHIN         [Ch.  VI 

products  of  scientific  conclusions  or  of  inadequate 
epistemology,  i.  e.,  hampering  theories  of  knowl- 
edge. 

Science  deals  with  the  universe  as  though  it 
were  a  complete,  self-sufficient  reality  by  itself. 
Cut  apart  from  mind  and  reduced  as  it  is  to  exact 
description  and  causal  explanation  it  offers  no 
scope  for  free  events  and  it  reveals  no  doors 
through  which  God  could  come  into  this  world  of 
law  and  mathematical  order.  Psychology,  too, 
brings  no  relief.  It  studies  the  mind  as  a  con- 
geries of  describable  states  and  as  completely  a 
causal  system  as  is  the  external  world.  Made 
rigidly  scientific  it  leaves  scope  for  no  realities 
that  are  essential  to  the  spiritual  life  of  man. 

Much  of  the  current  psychology  tends  to  carry 
the  limitation  of  knowledge  still  farther.  Mind, 
according  to  this  scientific  theory,  is  nothing  but 
an  empirical  product  of  natural  process  and  is 
merely  an  efficient  organ  slowly  evolved  for  re- 
cording sense-experience  and  arranging  for  im- 
mediate or  remote  behavior.  We  have  no  way  of 
finding  God  —  we  are  products  of  the  earth's 
crust.  The  most  we  can  do  is  to  fool  ourselves 
with  a  subjective  idea  of  our  own  make!  The 
fundamental  mistake  of  all  this  pseudo-knowledge 
consists  in  supposing  that  the  world  which  science 


Ch.  VI]       THE  SOUL'S  CONVERSE  121 

gives  us  is  the  actual  concrete  world,  or  that 
the  mind  which  psychology  describes  is  ever  our 
concrete,  active,  inner  life  with  its  riches  of  ex- 
perience, its  creative  power,  and  its  deeps  and 
heights,  which  no  scientific  category  can  handle. 
Science  gives  us  in  both  these  fields,  as  it  must 
give  us,  an  immensely  reduced  and  transformed 
reality,  fitted  to  categories  of  description,  with 
all  aspects  omitted  which  cannot  be  dealt  with  in 
exact,  ordered  and  universal  ways.  But  the  grav- 
est difficulty  comes  ( 1 )  from  the  tendency  to 
treat  the  fragment  of  a  world  cut  apart  from 
mind,  reduced  to  mechanism,  a  world  of  causal 
equations,  as  though  it  were  a  complete  whole; 
or  again  (2)  the  tendency  to  set  up  an  abstract 
ego,  "  alone  with  its  states,"  sundered  from  ac- 
tive commerce  with  the  environment  in  which  it 
lives,  as  though  this  psychic  abstraction  were  the 
reality  of  the  soul. 

Nature  in  all  these  schemes  is  treated  as  though 
it  were  a  complete  system  in  itself  which  man 
views  as  a  spectator  ab  extra.  This  course  in- 
volves a  fundamental  fallacy  —  it  produces  a 
world  as  unreal  as  the  "  grin  without  a  face  v 
which  Alice  saw  in  Wonderland!  It  is  like  a 
convex  side  of  a  curve  without  any  concave  side ! 
The  most  important  step  back  into  life  and  into 


122  THE  WORLD  WITHIN         [Ch.  VI 

faith  and  into  living  worship  is  the  recovery  or 
discovery  of  a  spiritual  conception  of  the  universe. 
The  way  out  is  not  by  an  attack  on  science  or  by 
a  revolt  from  it,  but  by  seeing  that  the  real  world 
in  which  we  live  is  vastly  more  than  the  mechanism 
of  matter  and  motion  that  submits  to  science. 
The  real  world  is  essentially  organic  with  mind 
and  mind  with  it,  completing  itself  in  man  and 
revealing  its  significance  through  him.  The  only 
world  we  know  concretely  is  this  rich  world  of 
life  and  purpose  and  beauty  and  truth  which  is 
always  a  mutual  fit  with  our  minds  and  through 
the  inter-relation  of  which  both  are  revealed. 
There  is  thus  no  world  sundered  from  mind  and 
there  is  no  mind  that  is  not  bound  up  with  a  world 
in  the  heart  of  which  our  consciousness  is  set. 
Well,  this  mind  of  ours  with  its  inherent  relations 
to  the  universe  of  nature,  with  its  creative  appre- 
ciation of  beauty,  sublimity  and  purpose,  with  its 
capacity  to  transcend  the  factual,  and  to  live  for 
what  ought  to  be,  with  its  sense  of  imperfection 
and  its  intimations  of  eternity,  is  not  the  abstract 
psyche  which  we  study  in  psychology  —  i.e.,  a 
mere  collection  of  states.  Each  finite  self  always 
involves  and  manifests  an  immanent  principle 
which  transcends  the  finite.  We  are  plainly  over- 
finite  as  we  are  over-individual.     We  each  pre- 


Ch.  VI]       THE  SOUL'S  CONVERSE  123 

sent  a  unique  focalization  of  a  spiritual  world, 
and  something  of  the  larger  whole  is  revealed  in 
the  individual  part,  but  full  divine  reality  is  ade- 
quately revealed  only  in  the  complete  organic 
whole.  "  The  open  secret  of  the  universe,"  as 
Professor  Pringle-Pattison  has  recently  said,  "  is 
a  God  who  lives  in  the  perpetual  giving  of  him- 
self, who  shares  the  life  of  his  finite  creatures, 
bearing  in  and  with  them  the  whole  burden  of 
their  finitude,  their  sinful  wanderings  and  sorrows 
and  the  suffering  without  which  they  cannot  be 
made  perfect."  In  our  highest  moments  we  feel 
the  significance  of  the  whole  organic  reality,  and 
we  come  into  some  sort  of  contact-relation  with 
the  Spirit  of  the  whole,  and  we  feel  then  as  a  child 
lost  in  a  crowd  feels  when  it  finds  its  father.  Un- 
til we  have  fathomed  the  deeps  of  the  soul,  then, 
have  tracked  its  origin  to  this  evolving  dust-wreath 
of  matter,  have  "  proved  "  that  it  is  only  an  em- 
pirical aggregation  of  states,  with  no  power  on  its 
own  acts  or  on  the  world  and  possessed  of  no  in- 
ner way  to  God,  we  may  well  go  on  worshiping 
and  drawing  upon  sources  of  spiritual  life. 


CHAPTER  VII 

CHRIST'S  INNER  WAY  TO  THE 
KINGDOM 


"  FROM   ABOVE  " 

It  is  a  favorite  idea  of  the  author  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel  and  the  first  epistle  of  John  that  one  does 
not  come  into  full  possession  of  himself  nor  par- 
ticipate in  an  adequate  way  in  the  life  of  the  king- 
dom of  God  until  he  has  been  "  twice  born." 
In  the  famous  Nicodemus  passage  (John  III.  3), 
which  has  figured  more  prominently  in  theology 
than  almost  any  other  passage  ever  written,  the 
essential  word  is  extremely  difficult  to  translate. 
It  is  avtofov,  which  may  mean  "  again,"  "  anew," 
or  it  may  mean  "  from  above."  The  context 
would  imply  the  meaning  to  be  "  again "  or 
"  anew,"  but  throughout  the  first  epistle  by  the 
same  author  the  recurrent  phrase  is  "  born  of 
God,"  i.  e.,  born  from  above  the  natural  order. 
In  John  I.   13  "the  children  of  God"   are  de- 

124 


Ch.  VII]       CHRIST'S  INNER  WAY  125 

scribed  as  persons  who  are  "  born  not  of  blood  nor 
of  the  will  of  the  flesh,  nor  of  the  will  of  men, 
but  of  God,"  i.  e.,  they  are  not  merely  natural, 
empirical  beings,  they  participate  in  a  higher  order 
of  life;  they  are  born  from  above.  This  writer, 
in  every  part  of  his  interpretation  of  spiritual,  or 
eternal  life,  takes  it  as  settled  that  something  from 
beyond  the  man  himself,  as  an  addition  of  grace, 
must  "  come  "  or  be  "  received,"  before  one  can 
attain  the  type  and  quality  of  life  which  Christ  has 
inaugurated. 

It  is  plain,  without  the  suggestion  of  any  theo- 
logical theory,  that  the  bundle  of  egoistical  in- 
stincts and  passions  with  which  the  once-born  child 
is  furnished  when  he  arrives  does  not  "  fit  "  him 
for  the  kingdom  of  God,  if  the  kingdom  is  to  be 
thought  of  as  a  cooperative  social  group-life,  of 
mutual  interrelated  service,  whose  spring  and  mo- 
tive and  power  are  love.  That  kind  of  world 
is  not  built  out  of  beings  who  live  by  self-seeking, 
or  self-regarding,  impulses.  From  somewhere 
something  "  new  "  must  come  into  play,  something 
"  higher "  than  ego-forces  must  emerge,  if  a 
"  kingdom  "  is  ever  even  to  dawn.  We  must  ad- 
mit that  something  higher  than  these  self-regard- 
ing impulses  does  "  emerge  '  in  the  growing 
child.     He  begins  at  an  early  date  in  his  unfolding 


126  THE  WORLD  WITHIN       [Ch.  VII 

life  —  long  before  he  is  consciously  religious  — 
to  reveal  a  capacity  for  love  and  to  show  signs  of 
self-forgetfulness,  of  restraint  and  sacrifice,  and 
of  love,  at  least  en  crepuscule.  And  as  life  goes 
on  unfolding  in  relationship  with  others,  the  signs 
of  "  other-regarding "  interests  and  sympathies 
multiply.  There  is  an  immense  amount  of  unself- 
ishness in  this  human  world  of  ours;  and  with 
all  its  evils,  its  positive  sin,  and  its  depravity,  there 
is  much  that  is  sublime  and  glorified  with  love 
and  tenderness.  Where  do  these  "  higher  "  traits 
come  from?  Are  they  "natural"  or  are  they 
"from  above"  and  u  of  God"? 

In  asking  this  question  in  that  form  of  hard 
and  fast  dilemma,  we  are  making  the  answer  to 
it  more  difficult  than  we  need  to  make  it.  This 
is  one  of  those  situations  in  which  instead  of  choos- 
ing "  either  —  or,"  we  may  take  "  both."  There 
is  surely  something  "  natural  "  about  the  highest 
spiritual  life  and  there  is  also  something  transcen- 
dent about  it,  something  "  from  above,"  something 
"  of  God,"  something  which  is  most  properly 
called  "  grace."  First  let  us  consider  the  natural 
aspect.  In  the  synoptic  gospels  Christ  with  the 
utmost  simplicity  speaks  of  the  life  of  the  king- 
dom as  though  it  were  as  natural  as  breathing. 
He  calls  his  followers  to  live  free,  easy,  natural, 


Ch.  VII]       CHRIST'S  INNER  WAY  127 

spontaneous,  undisturbed  lives,  like  that  of  the 
lily  or  the  bird,  each  of  which  corresponds,  with- 
out strain  or  effort,  with  its  true  environment  and 
so  grows  by  normal,  natural  increments  into  full- 
ness of  beauty  and  completeness  of  function.  He 
says  that  the  little  child,  uncalculating,  trustful, 
and  natural,  is  the  consummate  type  of  the  king- 
dom, and  that  without  this  likeness  no  one  can  ever 
be  in  the  kingdom.  He  puts  the  emphasis  con- 
stantly on  the  part  which  the  will  plays  in  human 
salvation.  When  asked  if  many  are  saved,  his 
significant  answer  is,  "  Strive  to  enter  in."  He 
keeps  saying  that  in  the  spiritual  sphere  one  gets 
what  he  persistently  seeks  and  knocks  for  and 
asks  for.  The  eager,  determined,  importunate 
will  to  have  the  highest  is  a  main  factor  in  achiev- 
ing it.  The  parable  of  the  talents,  again,  brings 
out  forcibly  the  value  of  cultivating,  occupying, 
expanding  one's  native  capacities.  Nothing  is 
more  amazing  in  the  immortal  story  of  the  prodi- 
gal than  the  simple  statement  that  he  came  to 
himself  and  said,  "  I  will  arise  and  go  to  my  fa- 
ther," as  though  it  were  the  most  natural  thing 
to  do.  All  the  beatitudes  attach  to  elemental, 
common,  familiar  traits  of  human  nature.  There 
is  in  the  highest  beatitude  no  leap  from  this  world 
to  some  other  world.     Each  of  them  starts  with 


128  THE  WORLD  WITHIN       [Ch.  VII 

an  every-day  quality  of  life.  We  do  not  need  to 
wait  for  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth  before  we 
begin  to  aspire  after  righteousness,  or  before  we 
have  a  sense  of  poverty  and  failure  and  humility, 
or  before  we  practice  the  ministry  of  peace  and 
reconciliation.  His  fine  figure  from  an  older 
prophet,  "  A  bruised  reed  will  he  not  break,  and 
a  feebly  burning  wick  he  will  not  snuff  out,"  seems 
to  mean  that  nothing  in  our  human  lives  is  so 
small,  or  weak,  or  insignificant  that  he  despairs 
of  it,  nothing  but  can  be  made  a  channel  of  use 
and  power. 

But  all  the  time  we  have  been  calling  these 
traits  and  qualities  "  natural  "  we  have  been  smug- 
gling in  and  implying  the  presence  and  influence  of 
something  which  can  never  be  explained  or  defined 
or  accounted  for  in  terms  of  matter,  or  in  terms  of 
purely  natural,  causal  sequences,  such  as  mathe- 
matical science  deals  with.  Wherever  unselfish, 
uncalculating  love  is  in  evidence,  something  from 
above  has  come  in,  something  of  God  is  there. 
Wherever  ideals  operate  in  a  life  and  control 
lower  instincts  and  carry  the  will  straight  against 
a  course  of  least  resistance,  something  not  of  the 
naturalistic  order  is  revealed.  Aristotle  long  ago 
insisted  that  the  higher  stages  of  thought  and  of 
the  spiritual  life  cannot  be   explained  OvpaOcv  — 


Ch.  VII]       CHRIST'S  INNER  WAY  129 

i.  e.,  by  outside  forces,  or  by  naturalistic  processes. 
They  must  have  their  source  and  origin  in  spirit 
and  not  in  matter.  And  psychology  to-day,  if  it 
were  frank,  would  confess  that  brain-currents  and 
molecular  vibrations  give  no  explanation  of  mental 
processes  and  give  no  clew  to  the  real  facts  that 
concern  us.  In  the  last  resort  there  is  no  explana- 
tion of  any  spiritual  trait  except  in  the  light  of 
spirit  and  in  terms  of  spiritual  influence.  If  some- 
thing divine  appears  in  the  unfolding  life  of  a  child 
it  is  because  "  something  from  above,"  "  some- 
thing of  God,"  has  come,  however  silently  and  un- 
consciously it  may  have  come. 

Once  we  supposed  that  God  and  man  were 
sundered  and  separated  by  a  wide  chasm  —  that 
God  was  "  yonder  "  and  we,  alas,  "  here,"  in  an 
undivine  world.  On  that  theory  he  could  reach 
us  and  assist  us  only  by  miraculous  intervention. 
On  that  supposition  the  natural  was  set  sharply 
against  the  supernatural,  which  were  insulated 
from  one  another.  The  traits  of  character  which 
were  mediated  to  the  child  through  the  group-life 
of  the  family,  by  imitation  and  contagion  of  in- 
fluence, by  impartation  of  ideas  and  ideals  —  all 
this  was  natural.  "  Grace,"  which  brought  salva- 
tion to  the  child,  was  wholly  "  supernatural." 

It  is  much  truer  to  hold  that  God  is  always  here, 


i3o  THE  WORLD  WITHIN       [Ch.  VII 

is  always  imparting  "  grace,"  is  always  ministering 
spiritual  assistance  to  our  lives,  even  in  the  most 
normal  processes  of  it  and  where  we  built  no  altar 
to  commemorate  his  presence.  And  where  any 
soul  reveals  unconsciously  the  marks  of  grace,  or 
has  crossed  the  great  divide  without  knowing  it,  or 
bears  a  shining  face  and  wists  not  of  it,  there  God 
has  been  working  and  something  from  above  is 
present. 

But  there  is  still  something  more  to  say.  There 
is  another  way  to  cross  the  great  divide.  Some 
cross  it  and  know  that  they  are  crossing  it. 
Some  receive  grace  and  recognize  it  as  grace. 
Some  feel  invasions,  are  aware  of  a  higher  life 
which  floods  into  themselves  from  beyond  the  mar- 
gins of  their  personal  area.  They  find  themselves 
met  and  challenged  by  a  voice  not  of  their  own 
lips.  They  are  called  out,  as  surely  as  the  net- 
menders  were,  to  follow  the  Christ  whose  love 
reaches  them  as  a  present  fact.  They  seem  to 
pass,  by  his  help,  from  death  to  life,  from  dark- 
ness to  light.  Everything  alters,  the  whole 
world  seems  changed  and  made  new.  They 
enter  a  new  stage  of  existence  and  they  seem  to 
have  emerged  by  a  new  birth  into  a  higher  way 
of  living.  Something  of  God,  something  from 
above,  seems  to  have  been  added  to  their  natural 


Ch.  VII]       CHRIST'S  INNER  WAY  131 

self  —  and  so,  indeed,  it  has  been.  These  are 
consciously  "  twice-born  "  souls.  Are  they  of  a 
higher  spiritual  order  than  the  souls  who  cross  the 
great  divide  and  do  not  know  it?  Not  necessarily 
so.  They  are  probably  more  intense,  more  dy- 
namic, more  convicting  in  their  influence  —  but 
not  more  completely  saved  and  not,  I  surmise,  any 
more  precious  to  the  heavenly  Father.  Any  way 
that  makes  a  soul  Christlike,  Godlike,  is  a  good 
way,  and  therefore  is  orthodox.  Some  souls  leap 
from  one  level  of  life  to  another;  others  go  the 
slow,  spiral  way  up.  But  none  goes  from  sin  to 
glory  without  God  and  his  grace;  and  when  any- 
one arrives  there,  with  the  new  name  and  the 
shining  mark  on  his  forehead,  he  will  be  met  with 
the  joyful  words:  "My  son  was  dead  and  is 
alive  again,  he  was  lost  and  is  found."  And  that 
is  enough. 

II 

LIKE    LITTLE    CHILDREN 

Christ  makes  "  becoming  like  little  children  "  a 
condition  of  entering  the  kingdom  of  God.  It  is 
certainly  a  strange  and  challenging  statement. 
He  cannot  surely  mean  that  a  child  is  better  than 
a  man,  that  there  is  no  gain  in  progress,  that  we 


i32  THE  WORLD  WITHIN       [Ch.  VII 

are  nearer  the  goal  of  life  when  we  start  than 
when  we  end ! 

It  seems  fairly  clear  as  a  principle  that  we  do 
not  increase  the  worth  of  life  by  reverting  to  its 
beginnings.  It  is  our  destiny  to  go  forward,  not 
to  turn  backward.  The  time-series  is  not  in  any 
case  reversible.  Space  can  be  traversed  in  either 
direction,  but  time  runs  only  one  way  —  onward. 
We  cannot  go  back  if  we  would.  Few  of  us, 
however,  would  go  back  if  we  could.  We  have 
caught  the  idea  that  life  is  a  cumulative  affair  as 
it  advances.  It  gathers  up  and  preserves  its 
gains.  It  grows  richer  and  more  expansive  as  it 
goes  on.  Not  in  childhood,  surely,  is  life  truly 
revealed.  Innocence  is  not  to  be  compared  with 
holiness;  negative  virtue  is  far  beneath  tried  and 
tested  character  which  has  faced  temptation  and 
triumphed.  We  do  not  expect  now  to  find  Edens 
and  golden  ages  by  going  backward;  we  seek  them 
rather  in  the  future.  They  are  the  achievements 
of  the  race,  not  the  starting-points.  We  have 
come  to  see  that  we  cannot  get  a  perfect  Church 
and  ideal  conditions  of  Christianity  by  attempts 
to  revive  or  restore  primitive,  apostolic  Christi- 
anity. It  cannot  be  "  restored."  We  must  go 
on  and  build  the  ideal  Church.  We  must  advance 
and  achieve  a  Christianity  which  will  spiritualize 


Ch.  VII]       CHRIST'S  INNER  WAY  133 

the  race  and  be  adequate  for  the  needs  of  human- 
ity.    No  mere  restoration  of  the  Galilean  condi- 
tions or  the  Corinthian  type  would  do  it.     So,  too, 
with  our  individual  life,  we  cannot  save  it  or  make 
it  fit  for  the  kingdom  by  a  return  to  primitive  con- 
ditions, by  a  reversion  to  innocence,  by  a  process 
of  emptying  the   gains   of  life.     St.   Paul   is   no 
doubt  right  in  declaring  with  satisfaction  and  with 
a  sense  of  progress:     "  When  I  became  a  man  I 
put  away  childish  things."     No  one  can  ever  miss 
the  fact  that  this  great  apostle  is  always  pressing 
forward,  looking  onward,  not  backward;  leveling 
up,  not  leveling  down. 

What,   then,   do  the   great  words  mean,   that 
"  becoming  like  a  child  "  is  a  condition  of  fitness 
for  the  kingdom?     In  the  first  place,  it  must  be 
understood  that  "  becoming  like  a  child  "  is  very 
different  from  being  a  child.     We  are  not  asked 
to  revert  to  a  past  state;  we  are  called  upon  to 
experience  a  transformation  which  proves  to  be 
a  genuine  advance.     There  are  certain  traits  in 
the  nature  of  the  child  which  can  be  taken  up  by 
the    mature    person,    reinterpreted    through    the 
gains  of  experience,  and  relived  on  a  far  higher 
level  than  was  possible  in  actual  primitive  infancy. 
Napoleon,  on  the  island  of  St.  Helena,  might  have 
become  in  his  spirit  like  a  child,  but  even  so  he 


134  THE  WORLD  WITHIN       [Ch.  VII 

would  have  been  vastly  different  from  the  inno- 
cent child  who  grew  up  on  the  other  island  of 
Corsica.  Any  childlike  quality  which  appears  in 
a  full-grown  person  will  necessarily  be  reset  and 
transformed  because  it  will  be  taken  up  into  a 
richer  and  more  expanded  consciousness  than  is 
possible  in  the  mere  child.  Memory,  too,  re- 
floods  everything  with  new  colors,  and  no  state 
can  ever  be  the  same  after  memory  comes  that  it 
was  before  it  came. 

One  of  the  beautiful  things  about  the  little 
child  is  his  simple,  natural  sense  of  the  reality  of 
God.  He  seems  to  have  a  kind  of  homing  in- 
stinct which  takes  him  naturally  back  to  the  Fa- 
ther, to  the  great  Spirit  from  whom  he  has  come. 
It  is  more  than  poetry  to  say  that  we  come  "  from 
God  who  is  our  home."  Child-minded  George 
Macdonald  has  caught  and  expressed  with  genu- 
ine insight  the  child's  feeling  of  wonder,  awe, 
mystery,  and  divine  reality : 

"  I  am  a  little  child  and  I 

Am  ignorant  and  weak; 
I  gaze  into  the  starry  sky 

And  then  I  cannot  speak. 
For  all  behind  the  starry  sky, 

Behind  the  world  so  broad ; 
Behind  men's  hearts  and  souls  doth  lie 

The  infinite  of  God." 


Ch.  VII]       CHRIST'S  INNER  WAY  135 

Some  such  haunting,  enwrapping  sense  of  real- 
ity as  that  is  a  normal  part  of  a  child's  experience. 
He  may  lose  this  native  trust  and  confidence  when 
reflection  crowds  out  instinct.  He  may  in  later 
life  learn  to  question  and  to  doubt,  but  once  his 
"  east  window  of  divine  surprise  "  lay  wide  open 
toward  God.  To  get  that  native  sense  of  God 
back  again,  to  feel  the  joy  and  wonder  of  untrou- 
bled, unclouded  fellowship  with  the  Great  Com- 
panion is  a  tremendous  gain.  To  stand  once 
more  at  the  doorway  of  the  infinite  is  a  heavenly 
experience.  It  is,  however,  not  a  "return";  it 
is  an  immense  advance,  for  it  glorifies  the  entire 
content  of  life  and  multiplies  all  the  gains  of  the 
long  journey. 

Another  beautiful  trait  of  the  child  is  the  ab- 
sence of  introspection,  self-conscjousness.  He  is 
in  the  hands  of  larger  powers  than  himself  and 
his  little  aims  of  life  are  realized  without  worry 
or  fret.  Great  instincts,  far  older  than  himself, 
carry  him  forward,  he  knows  not  how,  to  the  ends 
which  he  seeks.  To  become  like  a  child  would  be 
to  attain  the  humble  accuracy  of  instinct,  to  pass 
beyond  the  stage  of  fret  and  worry,  of  painful 
effort  and  reflective  consciousness,  and  to  reach 
the  aims  of  goodness  by  a  spontaneous,  unerring, 
and  uncalculating  insight  of  life.     The  highest 


i36  THE  WORLD  WITHIN       [Ch.  VII 

stage  of  goodness  is  attained  when  the  trail  of  the 
self  no  longer  lies  over  our  deeds,  when  we  no 
longer  bungle  them  through  self-consciousness, 
when  we  hit  the  mark  by  a  kind  of  second  nature 
as  unstudied  and  unconscious  as  the  child's  instinct 
is.  But  this  attainment,  this  formed  second  na- 
ture, which  is  as  accurate  as  instinct,  can  come  only- 
through  process  and  achievement  and  effort.  It 
is  like  a  little  child,  but  it  is  an  advance,  not  a 
return. 

Ill 

THE   INNER   ISSUE    IN   GETHSEMANE 

The  secret  of  the  cross  is  kept  from  age,  to 
age.  Sermons  are  preached  on  it.  Books  are 
written  about  it.  The  church  is  built  upon  it. 
But  it  remains  in  good  part  a  mystery  still.  Its 
meaning  baffles  us.  It  has  a  depth  which  we  can- 
not fathom.  Our  theologies  do  not  explain  it. 
Our  religious  interpretations  do  not  exhaust  it. 
Something  always  remains  over,  which  we  do  not 
succeed  in  putting  into  words  or  even  into  thoughts. 
The  cross  is  our  most  common  religious  symbol, 
and  yet  we  do  not  penetrate  very  far  behind  the 
symbol.  It  has  been  interpreted  more  often  than 
any  other  Christian  symbol  has  been,  and  yet  we 


Ch.  VII]       CHRIST'S  INNER  WAY  137 

wait  for  an  interpretation  which  will  satisfy  us. 

What  we  really  want  is  the  inner  meaning.  We 
seek  for  a  revelation  of  what  was  in  Christ's  mind 
as  he  faced  the  issue  and  accepted  the  cross. 
Theories  about  it  often  seem  artificial  and  con- 
structed to  explain  away  an  intellectual  difficulty. 
For  him  it  was  a  vital  fact,  not  a  theory.  He 
went  forward  to  the  cross  because  he  saw  that  it 
was  necessarily  involved  in  the  life  which  he  was 
living.  We  should  need  to  understand  his  mind 
and  in  some  measure  feel  what  he  felt  with  that 
pain  and  stigma  and  defeat  close  in  front  of  him 
and  with  no  way  around  it. 

"  Have  in  you,"  St.  Paul  says,  "  the  mind 
which  was  in  Christ  Jesus  .  .  .  who  became 
obedient  unto  death,  yea,  the  death  of  the  cross  " 
(Phil.  II.  5-8).  That  "mind"  is  exactly  what 
we  are  seeking  for.  We  are  trying  to  catch  the 
secret  and  to  find  out  what  was  in  his  mind  as 
he  prayed  in  Gethsemane  and  walked  under  his 
wooden  beams  to  Calvary  and  felt  the  nails  pierce 
his  flesh.  Not  a  syllable  is  spoken  which  under- 
takes to  say  in  plain  words  for  wayfaring  men 
what  the  deep  experience  meant.  But  perhaps 
we  can  come  close  to  the  heart  of  its  meaning  if  we 
try  to  live  our  way  into  the  agonizing  utterances 
which  break  out  and  reveal  at  least  dimly  what 


i38  THE  WORLD  WITHIN       [Ch.  VII 

he  was  feeling  as  he  went  steadily  on  with  his 
supreme  venture  of  love. 

Mark's  wonderful  words  are  most  vivid  and 
significant:  "And  they  were  on  the  way,  going 
up  to  Jerusalem;  and  Jesus  was  going  on  before 
them:  and  they  were  amazed;  and  they  that  fol- 
lowed were  afraid"  (Mk.  X.  32).  Here  are 
no  words  from  him  at  all,  but  something  new  is 
in  his  face  which  all  the  followers  have  noted. 
They  plainly  see  that  this  is  not  a  mere  stage  in 
an  itinerary.  It  is  a  crisis  in  his  resolution,  a 
turning  point  in  his  life.  His  mind  is  made  up. 
He  has  counted  the  cost.  Each  step  forward  now 
is  toward  the  cross  and  he  outdistances  the  scared 
disciples  who  timidly  follow  on  behind  him  in 
wonder  and  immense  fear.  Later  on  the  way, 
he  asks  his  most  intimate  and  inner  circle  of 
friends  if  they  can  drink  his  cup  and  be  baptized 
with  his  baptism.  They  think  they  can  endure 
it  and  go  through  with  it,  though  they  evidently 
had  only  a  vague  and  dim  idea  what  it  meant  in 
spite  of  the  ominous  signs,  for  they  were  plainly 
meditating  on  glory  and  triumph.  He,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  altogether  concerned  with  the 
supreme  law  of  the  spiritual  life  which  his  whole 
teaching  and  practice  in  Galilee  had  expressed  and 
illustrated:     "  He  that  loses  his  life,   the  same 


Ch.  VII]       CHRIST'S  INNER  WAY  139 

shall  save  it."  "  What  shall  it  profit  a  man  if 
he  gain  the  whole  world  and  lose  his  own  soul?  ' 
i.  e.,  the  very  thing  that  makes  life  life.  If  thy 
hand  or  thy  eye  hinder  thee  in  the  pursuit  of  thy 
spiritual  goal,  cut  the  one  off  and  bore  the  other 
out  and  fling  them  away.  It  is  better  to  enter  life 
maimed  and  mutilated  than  to  be  "  safe  "  and 
miss  it.  "  The  Son  of  man  came  to  minister  and 
to  give  his  life  for  others."  At  no  point  did 
Christ  reverse  popular  opinion  more  completely 
than  in  his  insistence  upon  self-sacrifice  as  the 
principle  of  human  redemption,  of  spiritual  deliv- 
erance. It  had  been  assumed  too  easily  that  the 
Messiah  was  to  be  a  world-ruler,  a  greater  David, 
who  should  break  the  yoke  of  the  foreign  oppres- 
sor by  his  power  and  restore  the  kingdom  to 
Israel.  All  men  were  looking  for  a  splendid  and 
irresistible  king  of  the  Jews.  The  consternation 
of  the  disciples  as  the  catastrophe  came  on  and 
the  jeer  of  the  mob  — "  Himself  he  could  not 
save  " —  reveal  clearly  how  the  tide  of  thought 
was  running. 

The  issue,  then,  in  the  mind  of  Christ  is  sharply 
drawn  between  the  popular  expectation  and  the 
fulfillment  of  the  principle  of  redemption  which 
his  own  life  embodied  and  incarnated.  Geth- 
semane  is,  thus,  the  scene  of  the  world's  greatest 


i4o  THE  WORLD  WITHIN       [Ch.  VII 

battle,  though  it  is  an  inner  battle.  Two  ways 
of  life,  as  different  as  light  and  darkness,  are  here 
in  conflict.  If  Christ  shall  decide  to  save  him- 
self from  his  hour,  shall  choose  to  escape  from 
the  agony  which  attaches  to  redeeming  love  and 
shall  emerge  from  his  struggles  with  his  de- 
cision made  to  be  the  kind  of  Messiah  the  people 
want,  then  divine  purpose,  eternal  love,  and  spir- 
itual hopes  for  man  will  have  been  defeated.  He 
feels  that  he  could  call  down  twelve  legions  of 
angels  to  deliver  him  from  the  cross,  but  that 
way  of  escape  would  not  be  victory  —  it  would  be 
a  new  triumph  for  the  forces  of  evil.  And  yet  the 
bloody  sweat,  the  groans  and  cries  of  a  soul  in 
deepest  agony  show  how  real  the  temptation  was, 
how  unspeakably  hard  was  the  lonely  testing. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  issue  the  case  stands 
clear.  There  was  no  way  to  save  men  from  sin 
and  selfishness  without  the  appeal  of  the  uttermost 
self-sacrifice,  without  the  boundless  cost  of  un- 
calculating  love.  The  only  way  to  win  men,  to 
redeem  them,  to  lift  them  out  of  the  lethargy  and 
unconcern  of  worldliness,  or  out  of  the  black  depth 
of  willful  sin,  is  to  make  them  see  the  tragic  cost 
of  sin,  to  create  in  their  souls  a  passion  for  God 
and  for  holiness  and  purity  of  life.  And  only 
one  thing  will  do  that  for  a  man  —  the  discovery 


Ch.  VII]       CHRIST'S  INNER  WAY  141 

that  some  one  understands  him,  appreciates  his 
condition,  feels  his  defeat  and  still  believes  in  him, 
suffers  with  him  and  loves  him,  just  as  though  he 
deserved  such  grace.  The  way  in  fact  to  beget 
love  in  the  soul  of  a  person  is  to  begin  by  loving 
the  person  and  suffering  with  him  and  for  him. 

We  can  almost  hear  Christ  saying  in  the  dark 
of  the  garden,  as  he  did  say  in  the  light  of 
Pilate's  palace,  "  For  this  cause  was  I  born  and 
to  this  end  came  I  into  the  world."  To  turn  away 
from  that  divine  mission  for  any  other  goal  was 
to  accomplish  defeat  both  for  himself  and  for 
the  race  forever.  Most  like  us  he  seems  when 
the  torn  heart  cries:  "  Let  this  cup  pass,  if  pos- 
sible." "  Save  me  from  this  hour."  Most  di- 
vine he  seems  when  he  calmly  says:  "  For  this 
very  cause  came  I  unto  this  hour."  "  Thy  will  be 
done."  He  emerges  from  the  crisis  with  the 
cross  inevitable  but  with  the  victory  clearly  won. 
As  at  the  beginning,  so  at  the  end  of  his  ministry 
he  has  met  the  most  subtle  temptation  to  take  an 
easier  way  to  seeming  victory  and  success,  and 
instead  he  takes  the  road  to  Golgotha  and  risks 
his  whole  mission  on  the  venture  of  suffering, 
sacrificial  love,  freely,  uncalculatingly  poured  out. 

There  is  one  more  single  moment  when  the 
strain  and  agony  sweep  over  him  with  insuffer- 


i42  THE  WORLD  WITHIN       [Ch.  VII 

able,  overwhelming  power  and  force  from  his 
lips  the  cry  of  anguish,  "  My  God,  my  God,  why 
hast  Thou  forsaken  me?  "  But  it  is  only  for  a 
moment.  The  great  loving  soul  immediately 
comes  into  full  possession  of  itself  and  of  its  spir- 
itual resources,  and  calmly  recognizes  that  love 
abides  unsundered  and  eternal:  "Into  thy 
hands,  O  my  Father,  I  commit  my  spirit." 

Here,  then,  is  love,  not  that  we  love  him,  but 
that  he  loved  us,  stood  at  the  most  critical  parting 
of  the  ways  of  life,  faced  the  deepest  issues  in  the 
universe  and  gave  himself  in  unswerving  faith 
that  love  would  conquer. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
JESUS  CHRIST  AND  THE  INNER  LIFE 

I 

IN   THE    SYNOPTIC    GOSPELS 

It  is  a  good  sign  of  spiritual  progress  that  our 
generation  has  become  deeply,  genuinely  inter- 
ested in  the  interior  aspect  of  religion.  We  do 
not  feel  as  certain  as  Christian  thinkers  in  other 
epochs  have  felt  that  we  can  expound  the  entire 
nature  of  God  and  man  and  the  cosmos  from  texts 
of  Scripture.  We  are  not  optimistic  in  our  ex- 
pectations that  we  can  explore  all  regions  of  the 
universe  with  our  logic  and  bridge  all  the  dizzy 
chasms  of  speculation  with  syllogisms.  We  mod- 
estly tend  to  return  home  and  to  explore  our  own 
inner  domain.  We  are  eager  to  discover  the  pri- 
mary facts  of  our  interior  life  and  to  follow  out 
the  clews  and  implications  of  our  own  indubitable 
experience.  The  laboratory  method  has  carried 
us  so  far  in  other  fields  and  has  enabled  us  to 
speak  with  such  coercive  authority  that  we  are 

143 


144,  THE  WORLD  WITHIN     [Ch.  VIII 

naturally  ambitious  to  apply  a  kindred  method  to 
religious  life,  and  to  find  some  central  truths  of 
the  soul  which  can  stand  all  probings  and  all  tests, 
and  which  carry  a  similar  conviction  to  that  which 
the  demonstration  of  experiment  carries.  We 
cannot  perhaps  expect  to  travel  very  far  yet  in 
the  religious  field  with  the  slower,  surer  method 
of  experiment  and  experience.  We  shall  hardly 
be  able  to  match  with  our  method  of  experience 
those  daring  feats  of  logic  which  marked  the  great 
epochs  of  theology,  but  we  may  nevertheless  ac- 
complish a  few  simple  and  essential  things  which 
logic  seemed  always  to  miss.  Emerson's  Fable 
of  "  the  mountain  "  and  "  the  squirrel  "  may  be 
appropriately  applied  to  stand  for  grandly-swell- 
ing logic  on  the  one  hand  and  for  humble  inner 
experience  on  the  other. 

"  The  mountain  and  the  squirrel 

Had  a  quarrel, 

And  the  former  called  the  latter  '  Little  Prig ' ; 

Bun  replied, 

'  You  are  doubtless  very  big ; 

But  all  sorts  of  things  and  weather 

Must  be  taken  in  together, 

To  make  up  a  year 

And  a  sphere. 

And  I  think  it  no  disgrace 

To  occupy  my  place. 


Ch.  VIII]  THE  INNER  LIFE  145 

If  I'm  not  so  large  as  you, 

You  are  not  so  small  as  I, 

And  not  half  so  spry. 

I'll  not  deny  you  make 

A  very  pretty  squirrel  track; 

Talents  differ;  all  is  well  and  wisely  put; 

If  I  cannot  carry  forests  on  my  back, 

Neither  can  you  crack  a  nut.'  " 

The  foundation  fact  for  this  experimental  way 
is  the  fact  of  an  immediate  inward  revelation  of 
God  within  the  sphere  of  personal  experience. 
The  person  himself  undergoing  this  experience 
feels  as  though  the  Fountain  of  Life  itself  had 
somehow  burst  into  the  rivulet  of  his  own  con- 
sciousness and  was  flooding  him  with  the  elemen- 
tal energies  of  a  world  more  real  than  the  one 
we  see.  This  experience,  which  those  who  have  it 
call  "  the  experience  of  finding  God,"  is  extraordi- 
narily dynamic.  It  is  attended  by  a  release  of 
energy,  by  the  opening  out  of  new  dimensions  of 
life,  by  a  greatly  heightened  elan  of  joy,  by  the 
discovery  of  unusual  power  to  endure  hardship 
and  suffering,  by  an  increase  of  insight  and  wis- 
dom and  by  a  sudden  increment  of  love  and  grace. 
There  is  of  course  no  way  to  appreciate  the  full 
value  of  an  experience  like  that  except  to  have  it. 
Like  the  feel  of  one's  own  hat  on  his  head,  or  like 


146  THE  WORLD  WITHIN     [Ch.  VIII 

the  rapture  of  seeing  the  Grand  Canyon,  it  cannot 
be  completely  translated  into  the  categories  of 
description  or  turned  into  the  coinage  of  com- 
municable thought.  As  flowers  can  give  poets 
thoughts  that  do  lie  too  deep  for  tears,  so,  too, 
there  are  events  within  our  own  souls  that  cannot 
be  put  into  the  patois  of  any  human  speech.  And 
yet  if  these  inner  events  are  real  and  transforming 
we  should  certainly  be  able  to  speak  intelligently 
about  them  as  in  all  ages  men  have  succeeded  in 
speaking  of  love  and  beauty  and  other  similar 
realities  which  exist  only  for  appreciative  spirits. 
The  New  Testament  which  is  the  supreme  source 
for  many  other  aspects  of  Christianity  is  also  the 
richest  source  of  material  for  the  study  of  this 
first-hand  religion;  this  religion  of  the  experience 
of  God;  this  religion  which  is  concerned  with  the 
formation  of  the  inner  life.  But  the  religion  of 
the  New  Testament  is  too  rich  and  many-sided  to 
be  reduced  to  one  single  type.  It  is  profoundly 
inward  and  mystical,  but  it  is  at  the  same  time  out- 
reaching  and  social.  It  brings  enlarged  vision 
and  it  stirs  the  deepest  emotions,  but  it  also  moves 
the  will  to  action.  It  calls  all  the  aspects  of  per- 
sonality into  full  function  and  it  is  the  spiritual 
activity  of  the  whole  life  of  a  whole  man. 

The  gospel  of  Jesus  everywhere  puts  a  very 


Ch.  VIII]  THE  INNER  LIFE  147 

strong  emphasis  upon  "  wholeness  of  life,"  as  the 
normal  result  of  the  attitude  of  faith.  It  seems 
certain  that  this  was  a  prominent  note  of  the  primi- 
tive teaching  and  a  positive  feature  of  the  early 
Christian  experience.  "  Art  thou  desiring  to  be 
made  whole?  "  can  be  taken  as  a  fundamental 
question  of  Christ  to  men.  "  Fear  not  she  shall 
be  made  whole,"  is  addressed  not  to  one  solitary 
case  of  need;  it  is  the  message  of  the  gospel  to 
everybody.  Christ  is  always  concerned  to  quiet 
strained  nerves,  to  allay  fear,  to  remove  preju- 
dice and  suspicion,  fret  and  worry,  strain  and 
anxiety.  But  he  also  goes  farther.  He  regards 
health  of  body  and  buoyancy  of  spirit  as  the  true 
normal  condition  of  life,  and  he  called  men  to  a 
way  of  living  which  produced  these  results. 
Pythagoras  taught  the  novel  idea,  many  centuries 
before,  that  the  various  elements  of  the  body 
could,  through  the  attitude  and  disposition  of  the 
mind,  be  put  into  such  relation  or  balance  with 
one  another  that  the  body  in  its  right  form  would 
reveal  a  harmony,  like  that  of  the  musical  scale, 
or  even  like  that  of  the  harmony  of  the  planetary 
spheres.  It  is  from  this  theory  that  we  get  our 
word  tonic  as  that  which  puts  the  body  into  tone, 
or  harmony. 

Christ  naturally,   spontaneously,   assumes  that 


148  THE  WORLD  WITHIN      [Ch.  VIII 

men  are  to  live  in  health  and  tone  and  efficient 
power  of  life.  His  gospel  is  in  this  fundamental 
sense  tonic.  It  aims  at  nothing  less  than  an  inte- 
gral wholeness  of  life,  a  harmony  of  outer  and 
inner  self,  a  freedom  from  all  physical  hindrances 
except  those  which  are  a  necessary  part  of  finite 
and  limited  existence  and  a  complete  possession  of 
the  potential  powers  of  personality.  That  way 
of  living  seems  to  have  been  the  normal  course 
with  him,  and  one  of  the  most  striking  effects  of 
his  relationship  and  fellowship  with  men  was 
this  fundamental  tonic  effect  upon  them.  He  or- 
ganized their  potential  powers.  He  liberated 
the  forces  of  which  they  had  been  unconscious. 
He  made  them  whole.  He  gave  them  health. 
He  actually  produced  what  Clement  of  Alexan- 
dria, two  centuries  later,  called  "  harmonized 
men." 

The  more  intimately  and  adequately  we  study 
the  sayings  of  Jesus  and  the  more  deeply  we  pene- 
trate the  heart  of  his  message,  the  more  clearly 
we  see  that  the  Kingdom  of  God  which  he  pro- 
claimed cannot  be  exhaustively  conceived  in  po- 
litical terms,  or  social  terms,  or  economic  terms, 
or  ethical  terms,  any  more  than  it  can  be  in  terms 
of  eschatology.  The  "  sermon  on  the  mount  " 
is  not  truly  comprehended  when  it  is  called  "  a 


Ch.  VIII]  THE  INNER  LIFE  149 

new  law  "  or  when  it  is  treated  as  a  collection  of 
ethical  injunctions.  All  his  sayings  can,  of 
course,  be  taken  at  different  levels.  It  is  possible 
to  find  what  look  like  legalistic  commands  and  to 
pick  out  words  that  seem  to  justify  a  definite  social 
and  economic  scheme,  as  it  is  also  possible  to  sort 
out  an  eschatological  strand.  But  as  soon  as  one 
begins  to  sound  the  real  depths  of  his  message 
in  sermon  or  parable  or  conversation  it  becomes 
clear  and  plain  that  he  is  dealing  primarily  with 
those  things  which  lie  at  the  root  and  basis  of 
personal  religion,  the  fundamental  disposition  of 
the  soul,  the  elemental  conditions  which  have  to 
do  with  the  formation  of  the  inner  life.  No 
change  of  dynasty,  no  acts  of  legislation,  no 
scheme  for  the  redistribution  of  property  and  in- 
come, no  proclamation  of  social  panaceas,  no 
translation  even  from  this  world  to  another  world, 
can  bring  the  Kingdom  of  which  he  persistently 
speaks.  It  begins,  and  it  must  begin,  first  of  all 
as  a  spirit,  as  an  attitude  of  soul,  as  an  inner  ex- 
perience of  God.  The  Kingdom  of  God  in  its 
first  intention  is  a  certain  kind  of  inner  life  — 
"  the  Kingdom  of  God  is  within  you."  It  presup- 
poses the  recognition  of  a  higher  will  than  our 
own  with  wThich  we  desire  to  cooperate;  it  implies 
the  discovery  of  a  spiritual  realm  of  Life  which  is 


150  THE  WORLD  WITHIN     [Ch.  VIII 

engaged  to  fulfill  for  us  the  incompleteness  and 
failure  of  this  world  where  we  toil  and  suffer,  and 
it  means,  too,  that  we  know  already  enough  about 
this  higher  realm  of  Life  to  say,  "  Abba,"  when  it 
surges  into  our  souls,  and  to  live  in  a  joyous  Fa- 
ther-son relationship  to  the  perfect  will  of  the 
deeper  universe. 

Every  step  and  stage  of  Christ's  life,  every  act 
and  declaration  of  his,  gives  us  the  impression 
that  he  is  in  personal  relationship  with  this  deeper 
universe.  It  comes  out  not  merely  in  the  synop- 
tics' reports  of  striking  auditions  on  momentous 
occasions  —  at  the  baptism  and  transfiguration, 
for  example  —  when  he  seemed  to  hear  the  words 
of  approval,  "  this  is  my  beloved  son."  It  ap- 
pears, again,  not  merely  in  that  confident  convic- 
tion which  he  felt  in  Gethsemane  that  he  might, 
if  he  would,  summon  twelve  legions  of  angels  to 
save  himself  from  his  hard  path  of  suffering. 
It  is  in  the  very  atmosphere  and  color  of  the  whole 
gospel  narrative.  His  consciousness,  so  far  as  we 
can  sound  it  through  these  wonderful  words  of 
our  accounts,  always  reveals  the  Abba-experience, 
the  Father-son  relationship.  The  world  in  which 
Christ  lives  is  never  confined  to  the  hills  and  sky 
of  Palestine,  to  the  walls  and  streets  of  Jerusalem, 
to  the  policies  and  the  armies  of  the  Roman  Em- 


Ch.  VIII]  THE  INNER  LIFE  151 

pire  —  in  short,  to  any  aggregations  of  outward 
and  visible  realities.     His  world  always  includes 
a  realm  of  spiritual  facts  which  are  more  certain 
than  any  outward  things,  and  the  most  certain  fact 
of  that  inward  realm  is  the  near  access  of  the 
Father-God  who  is  the  source  and  ground  and  sub- 
stance of  his  life.     His  simplest  words  are  loaded 
with  a  power  of  life  that  comes  and  can  come  only 
from  experience  of  God.     Everything  he  says  is 
reenforced  by  the  vast  background  of  experience 
out  of  which  it  springs.     We  are  moved  as  we 
listen,   not   alone   by   the   "authority"    and   the 
"  grace  "  of  these  sayings,  but  still  more  by  the 
interior  depth  of  the  personal  life  from  which  the 
words    come.     His    life    floods    through    all   his 
words.     The  energy  of  his  will  and  his  unalter- 
able  purpose   to   stake   the   inauguration   of  his 
Kingdom  absolutely  on  the  conquering  power  of 
love  and  suffering  and  sacrifice  give  us  an  over- 
mastering sense  of  his  inward  conjunction  with 
the  Father  who  can  be  revealed  only  in  this  love- 
way.     His  method  of  prayer  as  refreshment,  re- 
enforcement    and   vital   correspondence,    like    an 
open  window,  allows  us  to  form  a  very  clear  im- 
pression of  that  interior  fellowship  with  God  upon 
which    and   by    which    he    lived.     Whether    the 
prayer-experience    is    attended   by   radiations   of 


152  THE  WORLD  WITHIN      [Ch.  VIII 

light,  as  at  the  transfiguration,  or  whether  it  is 
marked  by  an  agony  of  bloody  sweat  as  in  Geth- 
semane;  in  both  cases  the  central  fact  which  breaks 
through  is  his  calm  reliance  on  invisible  forces 
and  his  unfaltering  assurance  of  intercourse  and 
communion  with  One  who  loves  and  cares  and 
knows  and  works  and  whose  way  of  life  repro- 
duced in  men  is  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

The  Beatitudes  of  the  Gospel  furnish  us  with 
a  window,  which  looks  in  upon  the  possible  inner 
palace  of  the  soul  which  Christ  means  to  build 
there.  No  words  were  ever  simpler  than  these 
"  sayings,"  and  yet  no  words  were  ever  more  pro- 
found and  wonderful.  This  inner  palace,  like 
Aladdin's,  is  built  out  of  invisible  and  viewless 
material.  The  whole  mighty  thing  consists  of 
nothing  but  qualities  of  character,  attitudes  of 
will,  traits  of  disposition,  aspirations  of  heart,  the 
set  and  trend  of  inner  currents.  Salvation,  in  this 
brief  account  of  it,  is  not  thought  of  as  admission 
to  some  celestial  city,  or  arrival  at  some  peaceful 
Avilion  of  the  soul, 

"  Where  falls  not  hail,  or  rain,  or  any  snow, 
Nor  ever  wind  blows  loudly." 

It  is  rather  the  formation  of  an  inner  self  of  such 
a  sort  that  blessedness  inherently  and  automati- 


Ch.  VIII]  THE  INNER  LIFE  153 

cally  attaches  to  it.  Consciousness  of  insufficiency 
and  need;  childlike  dependence  on  higher  wisdom; 
trust  and  confidence  in  the  love  and  power  of 
God;  willingness  to  suffer  wrong  and  to  endure 
seeming  defeat  rather  than  to  take  short-cuts  to 
easy  success;  the  spirit  of  meekness,  patience  and 
mercy;  hunger  and  endless  aspiration  for  fullness 
and  beauty  of  life;  sensitiveness  of  heart  to  the 
environing,  invading  Life  of  God,  passion  of  soul 
to  share  in  the  service  of  peace-making  love  and 
to  take  up  the  burden  of  the  world's  suffering,  and, 
finally,  quiet  endurance  of  misunderstanding  and 
abuse  with  unstinted  forgiveness  of  spirit  —  these 
things  form  for  Christ  the  stuff  and  material  of 
the  life  which  is  of  the  Kingdom  and  in  the  King- 
dom and  which  has  the  blessedness  of  heaven  now 
and  the  potentiality  of  infinite  expansion. 

We  do  not  discover  the  full  richness  of  the 
inner  life  as  Christ  reveals  it  until  we  take  the 
measure  of  it  in  terms  of  the  love  which  he  expects 
of  us.  "  You  are  to  love,"  he  says,  "  even  as  I 
have  loved  you."  There  are  no  other  words  of 
his  quite  so  tremendously  costly  in  their  demands 
of  consecration  upon  us  as  these,  and  at  the  same 
time  no  words  which  reveal  such  immense  faith  in 
the  inner  possibilities  of  men  like  us.  We  are  not 
merely  expected  to  do  as  we  would  be  done  by. 


154  THE  WORLD  WITHIN     [Ch.  VIII 

However  golden  that  rule  of  conduct  may  be,  it 
is  not  the  full  Christian  measure  of  life.  For  our 
true  way  of  life  we  look,  not  at  our  own  feeble 
imaginings  of  what  we  should  like  done  to  our- 
selves, we  look  at  this  inexhaustible  inner  wealth 
of  sympathy,  and  insight  of  understanding,  and 
appreciation,  and  tenderness,  and  uncalculating 
love  and  readiness  for  the  uttermost  sacrifice  to 
make  love  effective  —  this  is  the  way,  and  this  is 
the  full  measure  of  the  length  and  breadth  and 
depth  and  height.     Even  this  is  expected  of  us. 

One  cannot  too  strongly  emphasize  the  part 
which  Jesus  assigns  in  his  "  sayings  "  to  the  ener- 
getic will  in  the  formation  of  the  inner  life.  It  is 
the  strenuous  man,  strenuous  even  as  the  con- 
queror of  cities,  who  takes  the  Kingdom  by  siege. 
The  soul  can  always  have  what  it  wants,  many 
11  sayings  "  tell  us,  but  the  want  must  be  single, 
unintermittent,  unyielding,  and  washed  clean  of 
all  indecision  and  wavering.  The  man  who  sets 
out  on  this  aim  at  complete  spiritual  life,  life  that 
is  perfect  as  the  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect,  must 
be  ready  to  surrender  absolutely  everything  that 
threatens  to  hamper  him  in  the  pursuit  of  the 
soul's  fixed  goal.  It  cannot  be  attained  on  any 
fifty-fifty  scheme  —  half  of  the  life  set  upon  the 
world  and  half  of  it  focussed  on  God  and  the  life 


Ch.  VIII]  THE  INNER  LIFE  155 

rich  in  God.  The  all  must  be  given  for  the  all. 
There  is  a  fine  phrase  in  the  brief  account  of 
Brother  Lawrence,  the  Flemish  quietist  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  The  passage  to  which  I  re- 
fer says  that  the  brotherhood  noticed  in  this  sim- 
ple unlearned  man  "  an  extraordinary  spacious- 
ness of  mind."  "  Spaciousness  of  mind,"  or  what 
William  James  called  "  a  new  dimension  of  life," 
is  one  of  the  most  impressive  effects  produced  upon 
the  soul  by  the  discovery  of  Christ.  The  handi- 
caps and  limitations  that  usually  beset  fall  away, 

"  The  heavy  and  the  weary  weight 
Of  all  this  unintelligible  world 
Is  lightened," 

a  door  in  the  universe  somewhere  seems  to  push 
back,  and  widen  out  the  area  of  inner  space  where 
the  soul  lives.  It  is,  in  some  real  sense,  an  ex- 
perience of  God  and  it  always  brings,  when  it 
comes,  an  expansion  of  joy.  Christ's  disciples 
obviously  had  this  experience  in  high  degree.  It 
is  Luke  who  dwells  upon  this  trait  most.  For 
him,  the  gospel  is  essentially  "  tidings  of  great 
joy."  All  heaven  thrills  with  joy  when  a  lost  soul 
is  found  and  restored.  It  is  like  the  joy  of  the 
shepherd  when  he  finds  his  lost  sheep,  or  that  of 
a  woman  when  she  recovers  a  coin,  lost  in  the  dirt 


156  THE  WORLD  WITHIN     [Ch.  VIII 

and  rubbish  of  her  oriental  house,  or,  better  still, 
it  is  like  the  triumphant  joy  of  a  father's  heart 
when  a  child,  lost  by  his  own  willful  and  stupid 
folly,  comes  to  himself,  makes  the  great  venture 
of  trusting  his  father's  love  and  comes  home. 
The  joy,  however,  is  not  merely  in  the  heavenly 
region  —  in  the  Father's  heart  —  but  there  is  a 
joy  and  enlargement  of  soul  as  well  in  the  one 
who  is  "  found."  He  knows  that  he  was  "  dead  " 
and  now  he  is  "  alive  again  "  !  He  was  "  lost  " 
and  now  he  is  "  found  " !  The  broken  alabaster 
box  is  the  everlasting  "  memorial  "  of  an  inner 
transformation  which  opens  out  the  sky,  and 
makes  "  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth  "  for  a  poor 
sinner  when  the  love  of  Christ  finds  and  saves  her 
from  herself.  The  tears  that  washed  the  blessed 
feet  in  the  home  of  critical  Simon  were  not  tears 
of  hard  sorrow.  They  were  the  flooding  forth  of 
a  new  found  soul  that  had  burst  its  iron  prison 
and  had  found  the  sun  and  life  and  love  again  and 
was  saved  through  the  creation  of  a  redeemed 
inner  self  that  delivered  her  from  the  old  self  of 
sin  and  death. 

Strangest  of  all,  Luke  tells  us  that  the  disciples, 
after  they  had  seen  the  visible  Christ  vanish  for- 
ever from  their  sight,  returned  from  Bethany 
"  with  great  joy."     Something  had  happened  to 


Ch.  VIII]  THE  INNER  LIFE  157 

them  under  that  open  sky  which  gave  them  an 
enlarged  spaciousness,  a  new  dimension.  They 
had  lost,  but  they  had  found.  Some  kind  of 
energy  to  live  by  had  come  into  them  and  pos- 
sessed them.  Luke's  narrative  in  The  Acts  con- 
tinues the  thrilling  story  of  their  liberated  and  en- 
larged inner  life.  The  great  spiritual  fact  of 
Pentecost  was  the  consciousness,  in  this  little  band 
of  believers,  of  the  upwelling,  inrushing  of  the  di- 
vine Spirit.  It  was  the  epoch-moment  when  the 
first  Christian  group  passed  over  from  a  visible 
Master  and  personal  Teacher  to  an  invisible  and 
indwelling,  but  not  the  less  real,  Presence.  It  was 
a  transforming  event,  not  so  much  on  account  of 
the  novel  tongue-speaking  and  the  visible  phe- 
nomena, as  because  something  dynamic  and  ex- 
panding came  into  their  souls,  as  has  happened 
many  times  since  in  the  history  of  the  Church,  and 
prepared  them  for  dangers  and  sufferings  and 
labors  in  the  midst  of  a  hard  and  difficult  world. 
They  spoke  the  word  now  with  boldness ;  they  said 
with  faith  to  the  mountain  of  obstacles  in  front 
of  them,  "  be  removed  and  be  cast  into  the  sea,u 
and  it  obeyed;  they  rose  to  a  miracle-working  spir-i 
itual  life  and,  as  always  in  the  power  of  this  en- 
larged area  of  life,  they  thrilled  with  joy,  eating 
their  meals  together  in  gladness  and  sharing,  with 


158  THE  WORLD  WITHIN     [Ch.  VIII 

inner  happiness,  all  they  had,  for  the  sake  of  those 
who  lacked,  while  their  joy  culminated  in  a  simple 
agape,  or  love-meal,  partaken  in  the  exuberant 
consciousness  of  fellowship  with  the  living  though 
unseen  Lord  of  their  lives. 

II 

IN  THE   WRITINGS   OF   ST.    PAUL 

Still  more  wonderful  was  the  dynamic  effect  of 
the  discovery  of  Christ  upon  the  inner  life  of 
Saul  of  Tarsus.  It  is,  I  think,  the  top  miracle  of 
Christian  history.  It  has  become  almost  a  mod- 
ern truism  that  St.  Paul's  Christianity  cannot  be 
reduced  to  a  system  of  theology.  The  most  im- 
portant feature  of  it  is  that  vital,  personal,  auto- 
biographic strand  of  his  "  gospel,"  as  he  calls  it, 
which  is  primarily  experience,  "  knowledge  of 
acquaintance  "  rather  than  "  knowledge  about." 
There  are  no  doctrines  in  his  Epistles  which  are 
not,  first  of  all,  flooded  and  saturated  with  a  life- 
experience,  and  therefore  nobody  ever  can  under- 
stand this  spiritual  conqueror  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire who  does  not  succeed  in  some  degree  in  en- 
tering and  appreciating  his  rich  and  abundant 
inner  life. 

It  was  St.  Paul  who  first  expressed  for  all  Chris- 


Ch.  VIII]  THE  INNER  LIFE  159 

tendom  the  basic  idea  of  our  religion  that  the  Per- 
son who  had  been  for  a  definite  historical  period  a 
visible,  tangible  revelation  of  God  in  the  center  of 
the  little  Galilean  group  has  now  become  for  us 
forever  an  invisible  Life,  an  immanent  Reality, 
the  self-giving,  endlessly  revealing  Spirit — "The 
Lord  is  the  Spirit."  St.  Paul  looks  to  this  inward, 
resident  Spirit  as  the  supreme  dynamic  for  moral 
and  spiritual  life.  The  "  flesh,"  the  stubborn 
hindrance  to  all  goodness,  can  be  conquered,  even 
more  than  conquered,  by  the  power  of  the  Spirit 
of  Christ  working  within  the  man  and  forming  in 
him  the  character-fruits  of  Spirit.  "  The  law  of 
sin  and  death,"  i.  e.,  the  drag  and  the  dominion 
of  the  sinful  nature  in  us,  can  be  completely 
broken,  and  full  deliverance  can  be  won,  through 
inward  cooperation  with  the  law  of  the  Spirit  of 
Life  in  Christ  Jesus,  as  a  fact  within  (Rom.  VIII. 
2).  The  central  "mystery"  which  has  been 
brought  to  light  by  the  gospel  is,  he  insists,  the 
"  mystery  "  of  Christ  in  men — "  Christ  in  you  " 
(Col.  I.  27).  Life,  in  the  light  of  this,  takes  on 
new  and  wonderful  meaning,  for  it  is  nothing 
short  of  re-living  Christ  — "  for  me  to  live  is 
Christ"    (Phil.  I.  21). 

He  has  given  us  in  Chapters  III-V  of  2  Corinth- 
ians an  extraordinary  interpretation  of  this  "  new 


160  THE  WORLD  WITHIN     [Ch.  VIII 

life,"  which  is  a  wholly  different  biological  stage 
from  that  of  the  "  old  life,"  i.  e.,  the  Adam-life. 
He  contrasts  it  first  with  the  life  of  the  old  legal, 
or  Mosaic,  dispensation.  That  was  imposed 
from  without  upon  the  person.  It  always  re- 
mained foreign  and  external  to  him.  The  motive 
was  fear,  fear  of  consequences,  and  the  most 
which  this  system  could  do  was  to  create  a  con- 
sciousness of  failure,  a  conviction  of  sin  and  a 
desperate  sense  of  the  need  of  higher  help.  The 
glory  of  the  new  method,  a  far  excelling  glory,  is 
this,  that  now  the  creative  power  is  a  vital,  per- 
sonal Spirit  working  within  the  believer  and  trans- 
forming him  into  a  living  embodiment  and  ex- 
pression of  the  Christ-Life,  so  that  wherever  he 
goes  he  is  an  epistle  of  Christ  in  which  everybody 
can  read,  clearly  or  dimly,  the  lines  and  the  char- 
acter of  the  Christ  who  is  in  him.  He  no  longer 
needs  to  point  to  an  external  law  as  his  standard, 
he  does  not  find  it  necessary  to  carry  a  written 
tablet  as  a  passport  of  his  faith.  His  standard, 
his  law,  his  ideal,  his  goal  of  life,  is  more  or  less 
revealed  in  his  spirit,  in  his  deeds,  in  his  face,  in 
his  personality.  As  William  Dell  put  it  in  the 
seventeenth  century:  "  The  true  religion  of 
Christ  is  written  in  the  soul  and  spirit  of  man  by 
the  Spirit  of  God;  and  the  believer  is  the  only 


Ch.  VIII]  THE  INNER  LIFE  161 

book  in  which  God  himself  writes  his  New  Tes- 
tament."    The  process  of  writing  "  the  epistle  of 
Christ,"  the  New  Testament  in  terms  of  person- 
ality, St.  Paul  says,  is  a  double  process,  working 
both  outwardly  and  inwardly.     It  is  a  transfor- 
mation,  ever   increasing  in   glory   and   radiance, 
wrought  out  in  the  life  of  man  as  he  lives  respon- 
sively  in  the  contagious  presence  of  Christ,  with 
all  veils  of  prejudice  lifted  from  the  soul  and  with 
all  the  wrappings  of  contracting  custom  removed. 
The  power  of  unconscious  imitation  changes,  we 
know,  even  the  animal  into  visible  likeness  to  its 
environment.     It  transmits  into  the  inner  life  of 
the   mobile    child    the    emotions    and    ideas,    the 
speech  and  the  manners  of  the  family-group.     It 
changes,  too,  St.  Paul  says,  the  beholder  of  Christ 
into  the  same  image  as  that  which  he  beholds, 
from  glory  to  glory,  while  the  Spirit  of  Christ 
working  invisibly  within  pushes  like  a  mighty  tidal 
force  toward  the  same  end  — "  that  Christ  may  be 
made  manifest  in  our  mortal  bodies."     In  fact,  by 
this  process  of  the  Spirit  an  inner  man  is  built  up 
which  can  not  only  stand  the  afflictions  and  tribu- 
lations of  this  present  time,  but  can  even  defy 
death   itself.     In   some   way,    perhaps   no   more 
mysterious  than  any  other  process  of  life,  a  per- 
manent  inside   self  —  an   inner  man  —  is  being 


162  THE  WORLD  WITHIN     [Ch.  VIII 

woven  by  the  Spirit  which  will  abide  when  the 
tent  of  the  body  falls  away  and  dissolves  —  a  cov- 
ering so  that  the  soul  will  not  be  "  naked,"  a  house 
of  God  not  made  with  hands,  but  made  of  the  in- 
corruptible, indissoluble  material  of  the  heavenly 
realms  of  Spirit;  and  thus  death  becomes  the  com- 
plete liberation  of  our  personal  selves  into  real 
life — "  mortality  is  swallowed  up  into  life." 

Now  all  this  truth  of  Christianity  which  I  have 
sketched  as  briefly  and  compactly  as  possible,  rests 
for  St.  Paul,  not  upon  the  testimony  of  books,  not 
upon  the  transmitted  tradition  of  the  primitive 
Galilean  group.  "  I  did  not  receive  it,"  he  de- 
clares, "  from  men,"  "  neither  was  I  taught  it " 
(Gal.  I.  12).  It  came  to  him  as  "  revelation." 
It  was  a  thing  primarily  of  experience.  His  en- 
tire eternal  hope  rests  upon  "  the  earnest,  or  fore- 
taste, of  the  Spirit  "  (2  Cor.  V.  5). 

The  Stoic  conception  of  God  as  Soul  or  Spirit 
of  the  Universe  may  unconsciously  have  influenced 
him.  So,  too,  the  experiences  and  practices  of 
the  mystery-religions  may  have  had  their  sugges- 
tive influence  upon  him.  But  after  all,  the  thing 
that  counted  most  was  his  own  undoubted  personal 
experience  of  the  invasion  of  God,  the  insurging 
of  a  divine  Spirit  which  he  identified  with  that 
Life    that    was    personalized    in    Jesus    Christ. 


Ch.  VIII]  THE  INNER  LIFE  163 

"  God  who  said  let  there  be  light,"  he  tells  us,  in 
his  personal  account  of  the  "  new  creation,"  "  has 
shined  into  our  hearts  to  give  the  light  of  the 
knowledge  of  the  glory  of  God  in  the  face  of 
Jesus  Christ"  (2  Cor.  IV.  6)  ;  or,  again,  "  It  is 
no  longer  /  that  live  but  Christ  liveth  in  me  " 
(Gal.  II.  20). 

His  whole  system  of  ethical  life  grows  out  of 
the  "  new  creation,"  produced  within  by  the  Spirit 
of  Christ  in  the  inner  man.  Evil  is  to  be  over- 
come by  the  inner  forces  of  a  triumphant  good- 
ness (Rom.  XII.  21).  Love,  as  the  highest 
"gift,"  is  formed  within  by  the  work  of  the  Spirit 
and  becomes  the  creative  power  not  only  of  a  new 
individual  but  of  a  new  society  as  well.  It  over- 
tops tongues  and  miracles,  it  surpasses  prophecy 
and  mysteries,  it  outdistances  even  faith  and 
knowledge.  It  is  the  very  inner  substance  of 
"  the  new  world  "  which  Christ  is  building  out  of 
men.  Being  rooted  and  grounded  in  love,  Chris- 
tian believers  can  comprehend  together  the 
breadth  and  length  and  depth  and  height  and 
know  the  love  of  Christ  which  passes  knowledge 
and  be  filled  with  all  the  fullness  of  God  ( 1  Cor. 
XIII.  andEph.  IV.  17-19)- 

It  is,  again,  with  St.  Paul  as  with  the  Galilean 
group,  an  experience  which  brings  expansion  in 


164  THE  WORLD  WITHIN     [Ch.  VIII 

every  direction.  The  spaciousness  of  mind  which 
came  to  this  tent-maker,  when  Christ  came  into 
him,  has  no  adequate  parallel.  His  soul  burst 
out  into  new  dimensions.  He  lived  ever  after 
under  a  vastly  opened  sky.  He  became  so  tri- 
umphantly radiant  and  joyous  that  neither  beasts 
at  Ephesus  nor  Judaizers  in  Jerusalem  nor  dun- 
geons in  Nero's  Rome  could  hide  the  rainbow 
which  overarched  his  life.  "  I  can  do  all  things 
through  Christ,  my  strengthener  "(Phil.  IV.  13). 
"  God  always  causeth  us  to  triumph  in  Christ " 
(2  Cor.  II.  14).  "  Rejoice  always  and  again  re- 
joice "  (Phil.  IV.  4).  "  All  things  work  together 
toward  good,"  and  "  The  whole  creation  is  wait- 
ing for  the  unveiling  of  sons  of  God"  (Rom. 
VIII.  19  and  28).  This  is  Paul's  iEgean  gos- 
pel, the  gospel  as  it  was  interpreted  in  the  cities 
around  the  shores  of  the  iEgean  Sea,  and  finally, 
a  half  century  later,  this  truth  was  raised  to  its 
full  glory  in  the  fourth  Gospel,  which  is  also 
^Egean.     It  is  once  morenhe  gospel  of  the  Spirit. 

Ill 

IN   THE   WRITINGS   OF    ST.    JOHN 

This  gospel,  like  that  of  Paul's,  rests  upon  the 
central  faith  that  God  is  an  essentially  self-reveal- 


Ch.  VIII]  THE  INNER  LIFE  165 

ing  Being,  flooding  out  as  Light,  coming  into  per- 
sonal relation  with  us  as  Spirit,  bringing  into  play 
new  vital  forces  as  Life  and  offering  us  the  su- 
preme moral  dynamic  as  Love.     Here  in  this  cul- 
minating message  of  the  New  Testament  the  en- 
tire purpose  of  the  incarnation  is  thought  of  as 
increase  and  expansion  of  Life:     "I   am  come 
that  men  might  have  life  and  have  it  in  abundant 
measure"    (John   X.    10).     Here    the    synoptic 
concept  of  the  Kingdom  gives  place  to  a  new  goal 
of  life  —  a  kind  of  life  in  its  nature  inexhaustible, 
divine  in  its  origin  and  endlessly  expansive  in  its 
possibilities.     This  is  now  called  eternal  life.     It 
does  not  refer  to  a  far  away  place  or  to  a  remote 
age.     It  is  a  quality  of  life  beginning  here  and 
now,  a  way  of  living  for  any  world.     It  comes 
into  the  soul  from  above.     It  is  "  of  God."     It 
has  a  divine  origin.      It  is  like  another  "  birth  ' 
that  inaugurates  life  on  a  totally  new  level,  as  dif- 
ferent from  Adam-life  as  that  is  from  plant  life. 
But  it  forever  attaches  to  the  soul's  response  to 
Christ.     It  is  bound  up  with  the  attitude  of  faith: 
"  As   many   as    received   him   to   them   gave   he 
power  to  become  sons  of  God,  even  to  them  that 
believe  on  his  name  "  (John  I.  12). 

This,  again,  is  not  theory;  it  is  not  theology. 
It  is  experience.     Whoever  "John"  was  —  and 


1 66  THE  WORLD  WITHIN     [Ch.  VIII 

I  presume  we  shall  never  solve  the  mystery  —  he 
had  seen  with  his  eyes,  had  heard  with  his  ears, 
and  had  handled  with  his  hands  the  Word  of  Life. 
Either  outwardly  or  inwardly  he  had  lain  "  breast 
to  breast  with  God."  "  Of  his  fullness  "  he  had 
"  received  "  and  "  grace  upon  grace."  His  own 
life  had  "  received "  incomes  from  beyond  the 
margin  of  himself  and  had  leaped  to  the  new  level. 
Eternal  life  was  already  a  fact  and  no  more 
needed  proving  than  the  iEgean  sunshine  did. 
"  He  that  believeth  is  already  begotten  of  God." 
"  Faith  is  the  victory."  "  He  that  believeth  hath 
eternal  life."  "  He  that  believeth  hath  the  wit- 
ness in  himself." 

Salvation,  in  the  Johannine  interpretation,  is 
the  realization  of  a  divine-human  life.  "  To  be 
saved  "  means  "  to  be  of  God."  It  is  not  merely 
a  heightened  natural  life;  not  a  life  that  has  be- 
come refined  and  improved  by  the  weeding  away 
of  the  coarse  and  gross  qualities.  It  is  rather 
conceived  as  an  inward,  spiritual  process,  moving 
in  two  directions;  God  imparting  himself,  and 
man  appropriating  him.  The  discovery  of  God, 
or  better  our  consciousness  that  he  has  come  to  us 
and  is  giving  his  life  to  us,  is  our  opportunity  of 
"  birth,"  and  the  conscious  opening  of  our  life 
to  his  life  fj  the  birth.     In  a  natural  birth  there 


Ch.  VIII]  THE  INNER  LIFE  167 

is  no  choosing,  no  willing.  We  are  pushed  into 
life.  But  no  spiritual  step  can  be  of  that  sort. 
A  spiritual  "  birth  "  involves  a  choice.  There 
must  be  a  voluntary  opening  of  the  life  to  God. 
The  human  self  does  not  and  cannot  realize  all  it 
means.  He  knows  at  the  moment  of  his  birth- 
choice  hardly  more  of  the  potential  riches  of  the 
spiritual  life  in  God  than  the  new-born  child  knows 
of  the  significance  and  depth  of  mother-love  when 
he  smiles  his  first  smile  back  in  response  to  her 
joyous  face  bent  over  him.  But  both  have  passed 
a  crisis  in  which  there  has  been  the  hatching  of 
a  new  self,  capable  now  of  unlimited  expansion. 
It  would  be  impossible  from  the  nature  of  the  case, 
to  describe  the  "  birth  from  above,"  for  it  is  not 
a  describable  event.  No  free  choice  in  a  human 
life  can  be  described.  The  things  that  can  be 
described  belong  to  an  organized  natural  system, 
and  we  need  not  look  there  for  the  free  or  the 
spiritual.  They  simply  cannot  be  there.  They 
are  "  events  "  that  can  be  known  only  as  inward, 
private  experiences,  to  be  told  only  in  symbol, 
or  suggested  in  typical  language.  "  The  wind 
bloweth  where  it  listeth,"  "  so  is  every  one  born 
of  the  Spirit."  This  symbol  of  the  wind  is  sig- 
nificant, for  the  wind  is  peculiarly  that  which  is 
free  and  indescribable,  and  when  the  words  were 


1 68  THE  WORLD  WITHIN     [Ch.  VIII 

used  the  wind  was  supposed  to  be  of  all  physical 
things  most  free  and  unpredictable. 

His  own  figure  of  "  the  Door  "  is  doubly  sig- 
nificant. It  is  a  door  that  swings  both  ways. 
Through  it  God  comes  to  men;  through  it 
men  go  to  God.  John's  "  Way  "  to  the  divine 
life,  his  method  of  a  divine-human  life,  cannot  be 
clearly  grasped  unless  we  first  realize  that  for 
him  Christ  is  God  humanly  manifested,  a  Person 
in  whom  Divine  Life  expressed  itself.  Christ 
makes  real  the  supreme  fact  that  Divinity  and 
humanity  belong  together,  and  he  shows  them 
together,  not  in  a  "  double  personality  "  but  in  a 
single  harmonious  self-conscious  life.  The  ques- 
tion of  human  salvation  on  this  level  is  merely 
the  question  of  partaking  of  Christ  and  so  of 
God.  There  is  manifestly  a  "  divine  giving," 
but  there  can  be  no  effectual  salvation,  no  spir- 
itually new  nature  until  there  is  a  "  human  tak- 
ing." It  involves  no  loss  of  personality,  no  aban- 
donment of  selfhood;  that  is  to  say,  the  self  is  not 
merged  into  a  nameless  absolute,  "  fusing  all  the 
skirts  of  self,"  nor  does  a  foreign  will  invade  one's 
domain  of  inner  life.  Personality  remains,  but  it 
is  a  personality  conscious  of  its  divine  environ- 
ment, conscious  that  its  life  is  in  God,  and  a  per- 
sonality that  chooses  to  will  the  divine  will.     It 


Ch.  VIII]  THE  INNER  LIFE  169 

is  as  though  there  were  a  conscious  Ocean  with 
conscious  inlets  opening  out  of  it.  The  inlet  may 
have  its  defined  self-life,  but  it  may  open  its  sea- 
side to  the  Ocean  with  its  infinite  currents.  The 
fresh  water  of  the  land  may  flow  out  toward  the 
deep  sea  and  the  tides  of  a  measureless  water  may 
sweep  in  to  sweeten  this  shallow  inlet.  The  inlet 
is  in  the  Ocean  and  the  Ocean  is  in  the  inlet !  But 
one  is  blundering  when  he  attempts  to  illustrate 
by  physical  things  a  spiritual  condition.  It  can 
be  done  only  in  parabolic  fashion  so  that  a  spir- 
itual insight  catches  the  suggestion. 

This  method  has  been  followed,  in  a  most  pro- 
found way,  in  the  Vine-passage  (John  XV.  1-10). 
The  illustration  points  first  of  all  to  a  necessity 
for  a  vital  relationship  between  Christ  and  the 
individual.  The  branch  is  a  branch  only  because 
it  is  in  the  vine.  It  is  not  merely  in  a  close  ap- 
proximation to  the  vine-stock.  Its  life  is  in  the 
vine.  It  shares  the  vine-life.  They  are,  in  short, 
not  two  things  but  one.  The  vine  is  a  vine  be- 
cause it  has  branches,  and  the  branches  are 
branches  because  they  are  in  a  vine.  The  same 
sap  is  in  them  all.  Their  life  is  a  common  life. 
Branch  and  vine  are  organic  to  each  other.  In- 
corporation is  here  made  the  condition  of  spiritual 
living,  and  the  condition  as  well  of  the  manifesta- 


170  THE  WORLD  WITHIN     [Ch.  VIII 

tion  of  the  fruits  of  the  spiritual  life.  But  the 
figure  carries  us  far  beyond  the  mere  fact  of  a 
vital  union  between  solitary  individuals  and  the 
Divine  Life-source.  It  takes  us  over  into  an  or- 
ganic spiritual  society,  which  is  the  ultimate  goal 
of  the  divine-human  life  both  for  Paul  and  John. 
This  organic  society  is  implicated  in  the  very  na- 
ture of  the  spiritual  life  as  it  is  presented  in  the 
Fourth  Gospel.  It  is  a  life  of  giving  and  receiv- 
ing, a  life  of  inter-relation,  a  life  of  incorporation, 
so  that  finally  the  believer  partakes  of  God  and 
is  himself  in  God.  But  the  moment  there  are  two 
such  believers  the  two  lives  have  immediate  spir- 
itual relationship;  they  are  two  branches  in  the 
same  vine.  We  slide,  in  the  original  narrative, 
almost  unconsciously  out  of  the  figurative  lan- 
guage into  the  direct  "  commandment,"  "  that  ye 
love  one  another  as  I  have  loved  you."  Love 
here  and  everywhere  is  the  realized  union  of  spir- 
itual beings  in  an  organic  society.  The  two  com- 
mandments are  after  all  only  one:  "abide  in 
Christ,"  and  "  love."  By  doing  either,  one  does 
both. 

But  the  very  heart  of  the  teaching  on  the  divine- 
human  organic  society  is  reached  in  Christ's 
prayer  (John  XVII).  One  may  note  how  far 
he  has  traveled  beyond  the  selfish  and  competitive 


Ch.  VIII]  THE  INNER  LIFE  171 

basis  of  human  society  in  the  words:  "  all  mine 
are  thine,  and  thine  are  mine  "  (vs.  10) .  But  the 
sacred  refrain  of  the  prayer  is,  "  that  they  all  may 
be  one."  The  oneness  here  sought  is  made  defi- 
nite in  character  by  the  words,  "  even  as  we  are 
one."  There  could  be  no  more  definite  statement 
than  this  that  Christ,  as  John  reports  him,  out- 
lines for  his  followers  a  divine-human  life  like  his 
own.  "I  in  them,  thou  in  me" — that  is  the 
ultimate  spiritual  attainment  for  an  individual; 
but  the  prayer  draws  the  wider  results  which,  from 
the  nature  of  the  case,  flow  out  of  such  an  attain- 
ment, viz.,  "  that  they  may  be  made  perfect  in 
one  "  (vs.  23) .  This  is  the  Divine  event  to  which 
the  entire  Christ-revelation  moves. 

Dante,  at  the  summit  of  his  celestial  journey, 
sees  the  saints  of  all  centuries,  as  the  petals  of  a 
mighty  rose,  forming  one  consummate  flower  with 
God  himself  for  center.  Nothing  could  better 
express  the  truth  of  the  cooperative,  organic  spir- 
itual life.  It  is  union  of  differentiated  selves,  and 
a  differentiation  in  realized  unity,  and  it  is  a  union 
which  is  formed  by  a  divine  life-relationship  — 
"  I  in  them;  thou  in  me;  one  in  us." 

This  chapter  deals  only  with  one  short  period 
of  Christian  life.  If  it  were  possible  to  review 
other  periods  of  high-tide  experience,  we  should 


172  THE  WORLD  WITHIN     [Ch.  VIII 

find  similar  results  —  expansion  of  personality,  re- 
lease of  energy,  heightened  joy,  increased  spa- 
ciousness of  mind,  intensified  love  and  new  march- 
ing power.  It  turns  out  always  that  inner  life 
cannot  be  severed  from  outer  life.  There  can  be 
no  great  interior  life,  with  its  deeps  and  heights, 
without  a  losing  of  self  in  the  tasks  of  a  needy 
human  world,  and  there  can  be  no  great  human 
service  which  does  not  flow  out  of  an  inner  life 
that  has  Alpine  heights  and  deeps  to  it.  Christ 
ministers  to  both  the  outer  and  the  inner,  because 
he  is  King  of  a  Kingdom  in  which  both  the  indi- 
vidual and  the  social  group  are  essential  elements 
and  without  the  perfection  of  both  factors  neither 
one  can  reach  its  goal. 

It  is  profoundly  true,  as  the  aged  Simeon  finely 
foresaw,  that  in  him  "  the  thoughts  of  many 
hearts "  have  been  revealed.  He  of  a  truth 
knew  what  was  in  man!  He  opens  our  inner 
lives  and  discovers  them  to  ourselves,  and  he  is 
the  dynamic  through  which  we  can  become  an  ef- 
fective creative  force  in  the  making  of  the  world 
that  is  to  be. 


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